The dog ate my shipment; businesses share freight horror stories - and recall a few miracles

Nation's Business, Dec, 1997 by Steve Bates

Business share freight horror stories--and recall a few miracles.

By all accounts, the shipping manager is having a very bad day. His factory, one of the newest in China, is struggling to fill a rush order of men's and women's tennis shoes for a major retailer in the United States. He runs into problems loading cartons into a 40-foot shipping container. So he calls the importer's traffic manager in the States to determine how many shoes to put in the container.

"As many pairs as you can fit," replies the traffic manager, who also is having a bad day. "Please don't bother me with such silly questions."

Back in China, workers take the man at his word. They break down not only the shipping cartons but also the individual retail shoe boxes. The result is a spectacular}y efficient use of space, but also an equally spectacular disaster after the ship docks in Seattle and the cargo reaches the footwear firm's warehouse.

The shoes aren't tied in pairs. They aren't sorted by size, by style, or by any other method. They're loose. The retailer has already advertised a big sale, and time is short. Phone lines sizzle with screams all around the Pacific Rim as the parties attempt to lay blame and seek a solution.

The importer rushes the shoes to a gigantic warehouse in Denver, where workers scramble to match them and box them. The job takes nearly three months; the remainder of the manufacturing order is canceled; the importer incurs thousands of dollars in unplanned labor expenses and eventually unloads the shipment at close to cost.

The incident, which occurred in 1996, was one of many nightmares recounted by business people to Roberts Express, an Akron, Ohio-based express-delivery company that sponsors an annual contest--called Shipment From Hell--to find the worst delivery debacle.

The shoe saga wasn't even last year's winner. And, as Roberts prepares to announce the 1997 winners and kick off the third year of the competition in early 1998, it appears that there is no shortage of eye-opening entries.

Communicate, Communicate

Simply put, things often go horribly wrong when people try to move goods from here to there. Yet, even in the worst cargo disasters, there are lessons to be learned.

At the Seattle shoe company, the moral, as related by one of the participants, was: "Communicate clearly, and never assume the other guy knows what you're talking about."

The winning entry in the 1996 contest was submitted by a Chicago firm that received an emergency order for 400 five-gallon cans from the Alaskan government; the cans were to carry fuel to portable generators being used by workers fighting a raging forest fire.

At first, the air-freight firm couldn't fit the order in its truck. Next, the company lost the cans. They surfaced sometime later in Columbus, Ohio, but they didn't fit on the designated plane. The air-freight company vowed to deliver the cans--the next week. The shipment eventually reached its destination, the fire was put out. Meanwhile, the delivery company sent its invoice to the Chicago company in near-record time.

Some causes of shipping headaches--such as bad weather--are almost impossible to avoid. However, many human errors--and some that are blamed on computers--can be minimized. Poor packaging and address errors are cited frequently by shipping-company officials as causes of disastrous deliveries.

"Know your need and have carriers pre-selected for nonroutine situations," says Joel Childs, vice president of marketing for Roberts Express.

Charlie Ogle, general manager of ocean services with Airborne Express in Seattle, says: "Ask questions before you act. Don't assume anything, especially with international shipments." (For more help, see "Tips For Avoiding Package Purgatory,".) See how your company's delivery disasters compare with these recently nominated Shipments From Hell:

* A load of margarine travels from Denmark to Tacoma, Wash., where a ramp worker notices a leak in the shipping container. The cargo is placed in a truck bound for a warehouse, but en route the driver looks in his rearview mirror and notices yellow globs flying out of the back of the truck.

About 2,000 cartons of margarine have done a complete meltdown; the shipping documents from Denmark never specified a temperature setting for the cargo. As workers open the truck, the first comment heard is: "Anyone got any popcorn?"

* A bulk-flour tanker truck can't unload all of its cargo into one container at the end of a run, so the driver arranges to use two bins. Trouble is, the tanker driver gets distracted talking to the owner of a snazzy new pickup truck and forgets to switch to the second bin. Suddenly, they're in a flour blizzard; even the new pickup is coated inside and out.

* A freight company has delivery contracts with two movie studios, and one day each studio sends out an order of videotapes: one of family films, one that's X-rated. Naturally--and for reasons not specified--the videos get crossed. The managers of an adult-oriented shop are not happy with the tame movies they receive; the displeasure is even greater when the wrong films are opened at a convent.