Welcome to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I\u2019m Marty and today I thought we\u2019d talk a little about the Unloading or Lumper Position. We\u2019ve been catching up on some questions and topic suggestions over the last 3 or 4 weeks, and we\u2019ve seen a lot of sharing with\u2019em so I thought we\u2019d 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\u2019s 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\u2019d be nice to approach it in more of a job description way. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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\u2019s the reason I love doing what I do! So with all that being said let\u2019s look at the position of Unloader or Lumper, maybe we should even think of them as different positions?
\nOk, the Unloader position. With employees wearing so many different hats and having additional duties that come along with just about every task I\u2019ve seen the responsibilities grow with the position.
\nAs an unloader of course well arrive for work early, I\u2019ve 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\u2019ll be punched in, have all our PPE\u2019s on and be at our gathering point for our pre-shift or start-up meeting. Now as an unloader we\u2019ll be unloading trailers and containers, maybe even rail cars. We\u2019ll have some sort of schedule sheet that\u2019ll tell us what loads, vendors and products will be coming in and how we\u2019ll need to break them down, and how many pallets we\u2019ll end up with. Reading those break down sheet\u2019s is where a little responsibility comes in, it\u2019ll be our job to make sure we have separated all the different items, colors or sizes, different products another words and we\u2019ve 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\u2019ll 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\u2019ll put on the pallet or the hi. After we finish stacking a pallet it\u2019s always a good idea to run a layer of tape around the top layer of product or maybe w...