Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty and today I thought we’d talk a

little about the Unloading or Lumper Position. 

We’ve been catching up on some questions and topic suggestions over the

last 3 or 4 weeks, and we’ve seen a lot of sharing with’em so I thought we’d go

over this one again.  I saw a question

about an open position in a parts warehouse and the young lady asked exactly

what an unloader had to do and did it involve using a forklift.  I started to refer her to Episode’s 6, 51, 61

or even 63, we mention the opportunities of Unloading or Lumping in each of

them but, given our recent themes, I thought maybe it’d be nice to approach it

in more of a job description way.  It’s

kind of funny this question came up this week, on the last episode I mentioned

that the Driver Helper position ranked as number 1 or 2 regarding my all-time

favorite get our foot in the door or getting started in the warehousing

fields.  In my humble opinion Unloading

is the absolute short cut to a career in warehousing.  For those of us that’s never had a warehouse

position in a large distribution center it can be our entrance into a very

successful career!  Oh and that brings up

a comment I received a couple of weeks back. 

A listener felt that I mentioned the words large centers and corporate

companies quite a bit, did I feel that’s the direction she should be seeking

employment.  The corporate channels just

worked out for me.  I worked for 3

national companies and acquired all my experiences through them.  I was fortunate to wrap up my last 25 working

years with the same facility.  Oh I was

on several of their different teams, contingency team, move teams etc but I was

housed with the same opco.  But honestly,

as far as gaining experience, say right out of high school or if your changing

careers I think working with staffing agencies or independent, family owned

facilities can give us all the Operational and equipment experiences, and maybe

much more of that experience, much quicker than we’ll receive those promotions

at the larger centers or corporate settings. 

I now work with both worlds, staffing and smaller organizations, and I

see those career opportunities every day, that’s the reason I love doing what I

do!  So with all that being said let’s

look at the position of Unloader or Lumper, maybe we should even think of them

as different positions?

Unloader position.  With employees

wearing so many different hats and having additional duties that come along

with just about every task I’ve seen the responsibilities grow with the

position.

unloader of course well arrive for work early, I’ve always like to get there at

least 15 minutes early but 10 minutes will work.  The important think with any job is to not be

late.  We’ll be punched in, have all our

PPE’s on and be at our gathering point for our pre-shift or start-up

meeting.  Now as an unloader we’ll be

unloading trailers and containers, maybe even rail cars.  We’ll have some sort of schedule sheet

that’ll tell us what loads, vendors and products will be coming in and how

we’ll need to break them down, and how many pallets we’ll end up with.  Reading those break down sheet’s is where a

little responsibility comes in, it’ll be our job to make sure we have separated

all the different items, colors or sizes, different products another words and

we’ve sized the pallets correctly.  Two

weeks ago we talked about the Freight Receiver position, and how they would be

verifying the unloaders work.  As

unloaders we have to identify, separate and prepare the pallets for storage and

selection.  We’ll stack the items using

the information on our schedule or breakdown sheets with the correct

ti/hi.  Remember that ti/hi number

represents how many cases are on a layer or the ti and how many layers we’ll

put on the pallet or the hi.  After we

finish stacking a pallet it’s always a good idea to run a layer of tape around

the top layer of product or maybe wrap the entire pallet with shrink wrap so it

doesn’t come apart during transport to the slot or maybe lean or fall when it’s

placed up in a reserve slot.  As an

unloader out last step may be to place the pallet in a staging area for the

receiver to accept the load into our WMS, or warehouse management system, and

it becomes part of our companies’ inventory. 

Let’s go back to all those hats employees are wearing these days.  If we’re working in a lower volume warehouse

it could be our responsibility to be that receiver, and we’ll need to add the

p.o. to our inventory.  We could even be

the pallet runner and forkdriver too.  I

love facilities with these lower volumes, we’ll get so much more experience

there.  I like staffing companies for the

very same reason.  If we have a plan, see

how I threw that in there again, if we have a plan we can lead our recruiter in

the direction we want to go right?  Grab

a short term assignment as an unloader, then get them to place us somewhere

that utilizes pallet runners that’ll train us on the equipment, put in a little

time doing that and then get our bosses to teach us to use the forklift!  In initiating such a plan though please

remember our first order of safety, which is to never get on any kind of

powered industrial equipment unless we’ve been trained on and certified to be

on it! With a year’s worth of experience like that and we can then go apply

with any company we’d like to work at and we’ll be seriously considered for the

job!

Lumping a while ago, Lumping is another term for unloader.  Lumping is a term that use to be used when

over the road drivers would hire someone from the street to unload or lump the

cases off his or her trailer for them. 

There’s 3rd party companies that hire out for that task in today’s

world.  With much stricter OSHA

regulations and Insurance demands drivers and companies can’t just pick up

anyone off the streets and pay them to unload their loads anymore.  Which brings us to another kind of unloading

or lumping.  I consider this just as

skilled a position as we talked about earlier, it’s just we won’t have to do

the receiving and putaway.  Our task is

just to unload the trailers and containers, properly stack the pallets, wrap

them up tight and stage them in a specified location.  Both types of unloaders have pretty much the

same responsibilities all in all.  These

positions are still referred to by many as general labor positions but I

consider them a skilled position. 

Although yes, there a great 1st position in warehousing,

there’s a lot to learn and we’ll have the responsibility of reading the

schedule sheets and breakdown reports, separating the product and stacking the

products properly on good wood or pallets, wrapping them and getting them to

the receivers as instructed or up in the racks safely right?

pay rates for these type of positions. 

What I see at the lower volume facilities, you know where we may be the

unloader, receiver and putaway person, it’s usually paid by the hour.  Since we’re doing several tasks it’ll probably

not be a productivity task so it’s hard to measure the individual components,

there’s so many different tasks to be completed. Where we’re doing only the

unloading or lumping task I find piece pay or pool pay programs to be the norm.  And that’s really a plus for us as unloaders,

the more freight we move individually the more we earn for ourselves.  I’ll go ahead and admit, Unloading is my

favorite get a foot into the industry position. 

It’s just easy to get a little self-education and learn about every

other warehouse task around us. 

We’ll that’s the ends and outs of Unloading

& Lumping.  I hope I answered a

couple of your questions, and If you’d like another answer or two please don’t

hesitate to shoot us an email to [email protected]

and I’ll find someone with an answer for us. 

And don’t forget that our listener groups are pretty helpful and quick

with an answer over on our Facebook and Twitter feeds where WAOC can be found

24 hours a day and 7 days a week using @whseandops!  We’d appreciate a quick like or a follow if

you should be so inclined.  I’m having a

lot of fun over in the Facebook group Warehouse Equipment Operators Community

and I’d love to run into you over there!  Until next week, look around, what’s your next

step in your plan.  Go out there and

achieve your goal & please remember to do it Safely!