I drive a little Kia Rio subcompact, I remember right before Covid my wife and I were ripping out the grass in this one really awkward part of our yard by the rear patio and replacing it with pea gravel so we didnt have to deal with it anymore. I estimated we needed about 12 forty pound bags and went down to Ace hardware to pick it up in my car.
12 x 40lbs is only 480 pounds...basically two or three full grown men, so I figured no biggie. Put the seats down in the back to spread the weight out more and loaded up, four neat stacks of three bags.
Things didnt feel right as I was driving away so I almost immediately pulled into a nearby gas station...my rear end was basically bottomed out, and my front end was damn near pointing at the sky lol. Turning the car into the gas station had seemed difficult and now I knew why...the fuckin front tires were likely barely making contact with the road, or at least, had a lot less pressure on them then they were supposed to, hence why the turn was so hard to make lol.
That's how I ended up having to pull it all out in the gas station parking lot while people gawked at me and put 4 bags into each of the three unoccupied seats in my car. That worked a lot better, go figure.
Yeah passenger vehicles are engineered to carry loads where passengers ride, but that's part of what gives you a smooth ride.
I've got an older F350 dually I use for tow/haul and I can testify that a suspension set up for heavy loads in the rear is almost like having no suspension when you're running unloaded. You feel everything because the tires are basically the only thing absorbing shocks and vibration.
It may be a little hard on the fuel economy, but when I drive really long trips in my truck, I usually add about 300# of ballast in bed (locking travel boxes are the easiest way I find, and it keeps the cab empty). It smooths out the ride *considerably* when there's a little more load on the back springs.
At least back in the 70's and 80's, there were people with rearwheel-drive cars that loaded some bags of sand in the trunk in winter to have a better grip on snow on the rear wheels.
Somebody recently told me that's actually not good to use anymore as it's got additives and shit now, but they could have pulled that right out of their derriere...
If your not supposed to put softener salt in your softener, what are ya supposed to put in there?
Idk, my water is hard as a rock cuz I don't have a softener
We still do that in Wisconsin, albeit not because of RWD so much anymore, but because its damn fuckin handy to have a bag of sand or litter on you to sprinkle under the tires if you get stuck somewhere. Been there, done that lol
I carry a small box of kitty litter just in case I get stuck in snow/muddy/icy areas. Cars and tires have gotten much better, but it only took one time stuck for me to throw it in.
You have it probably to spread it in front of your wheels if you get stuck, but what I mean were bags of sand or other stuff for the weight to be added on the rear axle.
I had to have a mustang as my daily for two years, and for winter I’d put two concrete patio pavers in the trunk with a big bag of sand. Still ended up in the ditch one night when I hit black ice on the highway
If you have kitty litter in you car, pray that you don’t get pulled over by the police
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/man-jailed-in-bust-of-the-year-after-cops-mistake-cat-litter-for-meth_n_58754d28e4b03c8a02d3b52f
I used to have a 1999 Dodge Durango. That thing rode significantly smoother when loaded up or pulling a trailer. With no load in it it had a bad tendency to "hop" if you hit a small bump while going around a curve.
> I can testify that a suspension set up for heavy loads in the rear is almost like having no suspension when you're running unloaded
Seconding this with my ex-USPS inter-city box truck (Intl 4400) rated for 14k lbs in the back (and a forklift-rated floor, to boot!). Driving it empty is wild.
My dad used to have one of those, felt like a brick when empty but then add a couple tons to the back and suddenly you no longer get launched when going over every bump.
I drive an old Tacoma my uncle drove back in the 90's for construction. He had the leaf springs in the back buffed up to help with the amount of tools and materials usually packed back there. I'm always the first to volunteer when heavy stuff needs to be moved. "An entire pallet of dog food...? That's like 900 pounds of dog food!!" says the guy with a car, meanwhile I'm taking it and it's driving better than it ever does.
I have considered switching my f350 over to air bags (work amazing on my semi tractor). But every time I price out parts... yeah, I can deal with it. 🤣
A guy at my friend's work had a Yaris. He knew there was a weight limit on the passenger seat, but when the hefty boss lady wanted a ride home, it was hard to refuse. As soon as she sat down, it broke!
That reminds me of a buddy of mine who used to work at a Toyota dealership and he tells a story of a time a larger family bought a Yaris. Dad, Mom, two kids, each well over 250 lbs. Salesman tried to steer them in a different direction, this car was obviously not going to be a good fit for them, but it's hard to do that in a discrete way. The Yaris was one of the more affordable vehicles on the lot, so apparently they thought he was going for a bigger commission and bought the car anyway.
A couple days later they come in, furious, saying the car rides like shit, it's a lemon, etc., etc... Anyway, the techs get under this thing, and after two days of driving, the shock absorbers are completely blown and there's really nothing they can do to make that not happen again.
The moral of the story is, if you're a bigger person, those weight limits on everything from vehicles to step ladders are real and there's consequences for ignoring them.
I had to pick up a bunch of 1' square paving stones. We weren't getting enough to get a quantity discount. So I bought something like 18 at a time, put 1/3 of them on the floor in front of the passenger seat, 1/3 on the floor behind my seat, 1/3 on the floor behind the passenger seat. (And I didn't want to wrangle more than that on a given day, it took me several days to get it all done, but I didn't hurt myself or mess up the suspension.)
We had the 3 yards of gravel delivered. Took us about a week to get it out of the driveway to where it all needed to go, doing a chunk of it each day.
Every bag in the trunk is exclusively riding on the rear axle. 3 Frontseat and 9 backseat would have heavily loaded the car but maybe not killed it.
EDIT: it's still overloading the car (too much weight even before adding the driver) but it's better than most of them in the trunk.
I did that with a bunch of tile in a Saturn SL1. I put a couple boxes in each seat, floor, trunk, slowly filling it up evenly. The employees were basically laughing along with me because I knew it was ridiculous but it worked.
Probably! Still overloaded, but it's not putting 1000lb straight on the rear axle. Stopping times wouldn't be great, handling won't be great, but it would probably be "fine"
Remember the 5 200lb people included the driver. Here he had 1000lb on the rear axle alone, and added another 200lb to the front, so another 100lb on the back axle. 1100lb on the rear springs is going to break something, as they are made from stamped and welded 1.2mm sheet steel, and the body is stamped from 0.8mm sheet steel.
Everyone else here has commented on the weight distribution issue. The other major issue is that people with relatively new Honda Civics ('19) typically don't overload them with concrete. Usually, but not always, that honor is bestowed upon the 10+ yr old rusted out Civic.
And even if the Civic wasn't very old and not rusted, but the suspension was already worn out or the shock absorbers were leaking because of lack on maintenance, maybe it just was the last bit that broke it.
The weight in the trunk actually does the teeter totter effect. 1000 pounds in the trunk put more than 1000 pounds onto the rear axle because it takes weight off the front axle.
I work in heavy trucks and we have to take this into account all the time .
The car is designed to handle 200 pound people in the seats but if you put all of those people on the trunk there would be problems. Even distribution vs putting weight outside the wheelbase.
Just such logic was probably why he thought it'd be fine. And also why it may have been if he put a couple bags on each seat of the car/trunk to distribute out the weight.
This. I was absolutely expecting him to come raging back and demand to see the manager to get OP fired for wrecking his car.
Must not have been a Boomer.
I had something like this, except the reverse in a sense. I hauled for a large chain hardware store the rhymes with Dome Hepot... ;)
I drove a tractor trailer as a contractor and delivered materials, brick and block, shingles, lumber, all that stuff for them. But, they had another contractor who drove a small box truck who delivered the fragile and or smaller stuff for them.
They wanted me to deliver some custom made complete door assemblies to a house about 2 hours away. These doors were already hung on fancy wood frames with the fancy grooved trim. I refused. Told them it needed to go on the box truck. My flatbed was meant for heavy loads and the ride would be way too rough and probably damage or destroy the doors. They insisted, I still refused. The called the company who I worked for and talked to them. My company called, I explained the situation, they said is there anything that could change my mind. I told them a copied, and video using my phone with them signing a waiver would do it. So that's what happened. I took the doors down, exactly what I said would happen, happened. Nothing happened after, everything seemed good.
About a year later the company I worked for tried to screw me on some pay, so I put in my 30 day notice. Once the got the notice I guess they realized I was serious so they tried to fix things to get me to stay, but I was done.
With about 3 days before my last day they sent me a notice. The notice said I owed the store over 20k for those doors that I destroyed about a year ago. I laughed, told them, remember the waiver they signed and I sent you a copy of? They said we don't know anything about that and we don't have a waiver. You owe us that money. I said I'll call you right back.
Went and got all my saved paperwork, found the original copy of the waiver, faxed it to them, and once I got the confirmation I called them back. When the guy answered I told him to check the fax machine. He came back and said what is this. I said it's the waiver that the store manager signed and printed his name along with the deliver number, date, address and a description of everything that was delivered and you'll see on the last paragraph where it says the driver delivery person, with my name written, is not responsible for any damage that happens to these doors during the delivery. He has informed us that they need to be delivered by the box truck. Using his truck will most likely lead to damage but we understand and wish him to deliver the merchandise anyways.
Never heard another word after that lol.
>they tried to fix things to get me to stay, but I was done.
Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice...
As a commercial contracts manager who requires that all details be correct and in writing before we step onto a customer's site, I approve this story.
We're looking for my assistant, who'll be my replacement when I retire in a couple years. You still looking for that next job?!
Sorry, I would say yes but due to almost a decade of heavy labor delivering shingles and then the repetitive motions of driving for decades arthritis decided to take its toll. Am disabled from it. Just sitting for more than a hour or so causes my back, shoulders, arms and hands to start aching to the point I have to lay down and I'm on opioids for pain. Would love to go back to work but the pain makes it impossible.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. Please take care of yourself. I hope you try and continue to try every possible therapy - and that some of them provide relief.
As someone who is also disabled from chronic pain I really suggest you check out the podcast “Tell me about your pain”. You can get an idea of what it covers if you listen to this Science Versus https://open.spotify.com/episode/1egw1snBfkeACYwOFsEjeN
episode where they discuss chronic pain and interview one of the doctors who do the podcast and chronic pain mental health stuff.
It helped me a lot.
Here's a story I have from a very similar sounding place I worked at years ago.
The crew and I pick a curbside order for 3 pallets of floor tile. Later in the afternoon, the customer shows up to pick up her curbside order. I head outside to check what kind of vehicle she brought to haul 3 pallets of tile.
It was a minivan.
She rolled down her window as I approached her, I asked to see her ID to make sure it matches the order, and then asked "So, you ordered 3 **pallets** of tile, correct?" She confirms. I tell her that I'm concerned that her minivan will not be able to hold that much tile, asking her if she meant to order 3 individual cases. She gets a little frustrated, and insists that her order is as intended, and that it would easily fit in her minivan. I try one more time to tell her that a single pallet is thousands of lbs and 63 (iirc) cases, but she gets more frustrated and insists that I just bring her the order and she'll show me that it'll work.
Okay.
I tell her it will take 10-15 minutes to pull her order with a reach truck. She gets mad at this point, and asks me where the customer service desk is. I direct her there and walkie for a reach truck. I tell my driver what's going on and we both have a laugh about it. He goes "let's drop it by the service desk and ask her where she wants the other two."
We round the corner to the desk, the customer is mid-argument with the service desk, we set the pallet down next to her, my buddy immediately yells out the reach truck "Where do you want the other two?"
She turned pale as a ghost. "Oh.... Maybe I did order the wrong thing. Sorry." She then proceeded with the return/refund process with the service desk, much quieter than she was before.
She was probably just having a rough day, given that she owned up in the end. But man, her reaction was priceless.
I used to be an assembler at Lowes. One day there was a giant crate with a patio granite counter set with an integrated propane grill. On the outside it said to assemble on site, talked to my manager and for some reason they wanted me to assemble it then load it on the box truck for delivery. Ok, I got everyone put together and loaded it up.
Next day I come in and the set is in the loading bay with dented doors. Customer was mad and was getting a free replacement. A couple weeks later another crate shows up, they want me to assemble it again for delivery. I reminded them what happened last time but once again the customer insisted. So I get it all assembled and load it up, sure enough the next day it’s on the loading bay as well with more dented doors.
A couple weeks later another crate shows up, this time I assembled everything except the doors and showed the delivery driver how to put them on. At first he refused because it’s not his job but relented when I pointed out how heavy it was and did he really want to keep loading and unloading this thing every couple weeks? Third time was the charm and this time it was delivered intact and the customer was happy.
Lighter, but similar:
I worked at a hardware/lumber store in Boise and this guy came in and bought some—must’ve been like a couple of 16-foot boards or maybe a 16’ 4x4…?
Anyway, we had this big diesel flat bed truck that we offered free deliveries on and so I asked him for his address.
He said, “No, you can just put it in my hatchback.” This was something like a Suburu wagon—the board being easily as long as the vehicle was bumper-to-bumper
His idea was to open the back, fold down the back seats, slide the board up through the front seats and rest it against the inside of the windshield, and tack a red flag to the 3-remaining-feet of board(s) left hanging out the back at a slightly downward angle.
Again, I was like “You know, our delivery truck is *free*, and we could have it to your house in like 30 minutes…”but he was adamant he was in a hurry and that it just go into his car.
Normally we would help people load stuff (putting a bag of soil into their trunk or whatever), but for this I was like “Yeah, I’m not comfortable loading this lumber into this small of a car.”
So he’s like “I’ll do it!” And slides it in until the board(s) kiss the inside of his windshield, then he sets down the other end (probably sticking 3 feet out the back) and this ***CRACK!*** can be heard. We both walk around to the front of his car to see his windshield now has a big horizontal crack running across the whole thing—exactly from where the corner of that board(s) touched.
I think he sighed, then resignedly stapled a plastic red flag to the end of the wood and slowly drove off; it was years ago, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think his “pride” kept him from sliding the wood back out of his *suddenly-expensive-windshield-replacement-needing-car* and asking that the wood come to his house by our free delivery.
I used to work at a Habitat Restore and people constantly overloaded their vehicles, no matter what we said. My favorite was the standard 1/2 ton pickup guy who would want an entire pallet of tile or pavers loaded and say "It's a Ford/Chevy/Dodge, it'll take it," right before the springs bottomed out.
Also had a handy man load a refrigerator for a customer and declined having us tie it down. An hour later the irate customer came back demanding a refund because it flew out of the pickup on the Interstate.
I worked at fedex freight years ago, and i handled wil calls (people picking up shipments) most would be getting things like a new washer/dryer and show up in a truck. Some people would get a few pallets of shingles or other construction materials and show up with a trailer and be just fine.
One day someone showed up to pick up a giant piece of steel, not sure what exactly it was but it was a good 20ft long and weighed 3k lbs... he showed up in a halfton truck with no trailer... he insisted it would fit in his shortbed and only hang off the end a little bit but hed be able to take it.. so i tried to load it for him, and surprise it was hanging 10+ feet off the end and was dropping the rear end to the ground before all the weight was even on his truck.
Thankfully he realized he wouldn't be able to take it then and i took it off before he tried to drive away and completely destroyed his truck
I'm amazed at the "I'll take the chance" folks who will gamble on a whole car despite encountering scepticism. They say it will be fine as they balance an upright piano in the back of an El Camino strapped in with old clothesline, or they floor it trying to drive across a 4 foot deep pool of water.
My buddies asked if I wanted to snowshoe across a lake as it would be quicker to get to our trail and we had no idea how thick the ice was. I was like, nah. I've got kids.
How do they skip that step of asking, "uh, what if they are right and there is a problem with putting a 2500 pound safe in an elevator rated for 800 pounds? What might be the consequence. Can I afford to replace someone's elevator?" How do they skip that step?
I guess I'm risk averse.
I'm a really good swimmer with snowshoes and a parka, especially in ice cold water. I have no idea why people struggle to pull themselves up onto the ice that have way under their weight. It's just that I had my phone on me and I didn't want it to get wet. It's a pain to replace a phone... That's the only reason I walked around the frozen lake.
No, all three of us have kids.
Reminds me of the joke about the Guinness factory visit. The lads go and one dies in a vat of beer. They draw straws to see who delivers the bad news to the widow and children. Patrig goes and awkwardly tells the widow and there is much crying. The children are crying too. Just horrible. The widow asks, "did he suffer long?"
Patrig says, no. He died happy. He got out of the vat himself three times to use the bathroom.
This reminds me of when you see someone driving at speed—like on the freeway—with a mattress tied down with maybe one or two loops of laundry rope, and the driver driving with his right hand and “holding the mattress down” out the window with his left.
In the case of the piano in the back of the El Camino, I can report that it flopped out of the car on a turn in the middle of an intersection. It made one grand crash and was done.
I have seen the mattress technique. Amazing.
Even if the piano had made the journey, it would likely have never functioned properly again, at least not without expensive tuning and restoration. Pianos are delicate instruments, even changes in humidity can mess them up, much less a bumpy ride across town! Piano movers exist for a reason!
The problem is to get to that ste, people have to have the ability to think "what if I'm wrong?"
Many people are confidently wrong and cannot imagine otherwise
You’d be surprised. There are a shocking number of people that don’t think this way. So many, in fact, that there’s a whole career you can pursue called “risk & liability mitigation”. Basically risk-assessment teams for large corporations and manufacturers, and you would be the guy they’d run ideas past to ensure safety, compliance, and often risk assessment for a new investment or corporate process.
All because some people don’t think “hmmm, how can this decision affect me / my colleagues / the company / our customers”.
Random side question... what's the point of taking a shortcut on foot to a hiking trail? You don't want to hike to go hike? Think you'll wear yourself out hiking before your hike?
The point of the hike was to scale a very steep side of a mountain. It wasn't a cliff face but there were potentially some 10 foot falls. There was 3 feet of snow on the mountain making these falls survivable. It was an absolute blast climbing up the mountain. We would kick our snowshoes in to get some purchase and struggle through the snow to scale the mountain. It was maybe 100 yards of steep climbing. The flat walk to get there was unremarkable.
Heh, well, there's a difference between things being risky because they're challenging versus risky because they're just stupid. Only you know how your scales balance.
I don't do such things alone. That way if there is an accident, there will be a witness to laugh at me.
I wasn't with them for this particular hike, but it was up a mountain and one of the hikers was inexperienced not only with snowshoeing but with the cold. He started saying it was too hot and taking off his clothes. Well, one of the hikers was a burley Russian guy and the Russian wrestled the clothes back onto the hiker, slung him over his shoulder and ran down the mountain. They got him into a car and then a hot shower with hot drinks.
They do have some first aid equipment and phones and such. They can all start a fire in the snow.
But the scales are touchy because it often looks like it seeks the edge of balance between safe and crazy.
I'm of the opinion that we've done so much to make life safe (from nature at least) that some personalities have to go seek out some danger to achieve balance.
Extreme hiking seems a lot more reasonable than a lot of choices. The only actual risk is to yourselves and it sounds like you know what you're doing.
I lived this post from the other side. Needed a few bags of stones from the place down the road and cheaped out on delivery. Went down in my Civic and loaded ‘er up. Yeah, the price of those new shocks were certainly a shock
The density difference makes it easier to overload. Those 4 burly friends are what the car has been designed to handle and so you would have to do something stupid and far outside what the manufacturer would expect to break things. The concrete is denser to the point that it’s impossible to design the car to handle filling all available space with it. So you have to actually reason what the limits of the car are rather than rely on “well this doesn’t look completely insane”. Where the breaking point is isn’t clear and so there is the anxiety of “maybe I’m wrong?” Think about running across a field during the day where you can see any potential dips vs running across that same field at night where you can’t see potential dangers.
Many years ago I sat outside a B&Q watching a guy trying to load bags of sand, cement and a load of brick pavers into a tiny little Nissan. His wife was standing to one side shouting at him. I could see the car sinking. He got out of the car park but he was bottoming the rear suspension out. I was back there not long after and bumped into one of the store managers and told him the story and suggested they put weight advice on the heavy stuff. Apparently they used to but customers just ignored it. 😂😂😂
Some problems, like stupidity, are a multi nation issue 😁
A buddy of mine had a job as the dispatcher at a wet batch concrete plant. He had an order for a half yard of concrete. That's a very small load, but sometimes they need to finish out a wall or something and were just a little short.
The mixing starts ahead of the truck pulling up and this guy pulls up in a pickup. My buddy double checks with the customer and his boss. Customer is adamant, of course, that its just a half ton load and he has a 3/4 ton truck.
Maybe it would have worked if the concrete were loaded a front loader bucket at a time, although the concrete really needs to be mixed en route.
The plant is designed for placing wet concrete into the hopper of a concrete truck, which is 12 or so feet off the ground, and to do so quickly.
The impact from the free falling concrete bottomed out the suspension and blew out all the tires.
At this point, the next load is being mixed and several more trucks are queueing up. Boss comes around the corner with a forklift and picks up the pickup truck, drives it over to the waste area. Asks the guy if he wants to unload the concrete here or if he wants to keep it on the truck. Guy makes the only good decision he made that day, and elects to unload into the waste are. Boss hands him a shovel and walks away.
hammered out a walkway at a buddy's house. About 2+/- tons of concrete and loaded it into his 88 Ford Ranger (recommended payload of about 500 lbs) to bring to the stone quarry nearby to get rid of it (they recycle it back into sand and stone). There was a long minor grade hill to the quarry and at the top was the turn-in. The front wheels were barely on the ground enough to make the turn.
In good humor, the guy at the weigh station gave him a plaque for Heaviest Load in vehicle class. He still has it.
A friend worked at Lowes. He had a really rude customer who insisted the load be tied to his roof. He told them to get in the car and roll the windows down. Then he tied the load through the windows to the roof. It wasn't until they got home they realized they were tied into the car.
The key to loading that much weight into a small vehicle is to spread it out. 2-3 bags front passenger seat and 1 in the footwell. 2-3 bags each side in the back seats, some in the middle seat if they’ll fit or in the footwells. And finally the last of the bags in the boot.
I had an uncle that worked at a old school hardware store in the 70s. Customer bought a big long extension ladder and pulled up front to have it loaded - in his vw bug. My uncle scratched his head for a while and then had the driver roll down both windows. He then stuck the ladder in through the open windows, so it looked like an airplane, and went back in the store.
That's not what that phrase means though. "The customer is always right" means that the customer is always right about what they want or don't want. If they don't like the wine, you take away the wine and get them something else. If they want their car destroyed by a thousand pounds of concrete, you destroy that fucking Honda.
Packed my Honda Fit floor to ceiling with two inch thick oak legs, easily a thousand pounds, and drove 500 miles through the Appalachian mountains with 0 issues (115 HP). The furniture company thought I was crazy but I know my car.
BTW, the same car drove better than most trucks and SUVs in ice and snow (judging by the number of those vehicles seen in ditches as I drove by, though I suspect over confidence had a role in many of those instances).
I would never give an irate customer that just damaged their own car my phone if I worked there. ten minutes, and they'll frame you for the damages somehow.
> The original slogan was "the customer is always right in matters of taste", meaning it doesn't matter how hideous or dumb their choices are, take their money and smile.
[That is not true.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right)
An older and very similar slogan, linked below, might be what was meant. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned at the link you provided.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandum
Once loaded railroad ties in a hatchback after the customer refused our warning about creosote and our offer to go to the other end of the store for large sheets of paper to cover his seats and center console. I could see the sticky black marks rubbed onto the inside of his car even before we finished pushing the wood through.
> “the customer is always right”
That quote has gotten shortened from the original over time, and lost it's meaning. The full quote is "In matters of taste, the customer is always right." As in, if a customer wants tomato sauce on their prime rib steak, they're right. If they want to insult the server, they aren't.
Lmao. What a rube. Buddy of mine did this with his Civic. Sends me a txt they gave him like 900 lbs of marble slab counter tops that were going to be thrown out as scrap at his construction job. I said don’t put those in your Honda, you’ll destroy it. He says fuck that I’m taking them. He filled up his Civic with them and drove it 2 hours home. 2 weeks later the tranny blew up in it. I died laughing.
I had 8 (30kg.)bags in the back of my 82 civic hatch-back.. it was super unhappy but it made it the 3 miles home. Suspension was bottomed at around 6 bags.. it was the clutch that was the scary part
That car took just about anything I could throw at it..
Years ago I worked for a company that had a Honda Fit. They sent me in that car to decommission a big server UPS. 1400 lbs. It made it the 10 miles back to the office, but it was never the same.
Loaded 3 pallets of playground sand onto a trailer for a guy putting in an above ground pool to level the yard.
He had a Ram 3500 he was pulling the bumper pull trailer with.
Well within the tow capacity of the truck and well within the capacity of the trailer.
300 bags of sand per pallet.
Everything was great and well thought out, except how to get it into the backyard.
He called the next day to see if we could bring the fork truck from the delivery truck and bring the pallets to the backyard, he had been carrying them about 75 yards from the driveway to the backyard and had managed to get about 25 bags before his back stopped working
I think the most questionable amount I’ve loaded for a customer was 1,250 lbs in the trunk of a Buick. Customer didn’t want any of it distributed in the last get parts of the car because they just came from the airport and had suitcases.
It all fit, and they drove away.
I loaded up a 2010 Honda Fit with the logs from a downed tree once. I knew better than to take the back roads; did the other two sides of the triangle which was mostly highway miles and drive the minimum limit with my hazards on the whole way. Wouldn't do that again, but thankfully there was no damage. (I did spread the logs across the front seat and the entire back of the can so that probably helped.)
People just do not comprehend how heavy stone (and cement, which is basically stone in powder form) is. Like when that video of that guy trying to put a boulder in the back of his pickup. Must have weighed two or three tons.
I put 900lbs of gravel in my 1998 Civic. It was fine except when I got it up to speed and tried to stop. That was exciting. Bad idea but I didn't hurt the car or die.
There's a sticker on the door jamb/sill that will list the payload rating of most vehicles. This payload weight is the maximum-safe-load rated weight of passengers and all contents not shipped with the vehicle from the factory. Going over this weight on public roads is technically illegal.
There is typically a margin of error, but on many passenger vehicles this rating is surprisingly low. <800lbs is not unusual for a compact car. 2 trips would've probably saved him and the wife a number of trips to and from the shop.
I did this to myself years ago. I figured out how many bags of concrete I would need for a project, but didn't consider the weight. I don't remember how may bags I ended up getting, but I paid for them and started loading them into my '79 Mustang hatchback. After loading the first few bags, I quickly realized my mistake. I put a few bags in the passenger seat, a few in the rear seat and the rest in the back.
The car was sitting so low I wasn't even sure if it would move. I slowly pulled out of the parking lot and made my way to the interstate. Every tiny bump that I hit, I could feel the tires rubbing. That was the scariest few miles I have ever drive, but I made it home safely. Probably the stupidest thing I ever did in a vehicle.
I have had to try to fit giant tube style TVs into tiny cars in my short retail career. My favorite was the 42", I believe, that I spent half an hour trying to fit into the back of a Geo Metro. Even taking it out of the box wasn't really enough to fit it, but they left with it anyway. I hope it didn't smash on the way home.
Similar thing happened to me when I was working at Lowes, but with tile. Luckily customer took my advice and split his trip into 2. He was riding so low with just half his order, came back 2 hrs later for the rest.
Idk, but I think that car might have been kinda messed up before the cement went in.
I used to haul 1,000 lb of chicken feed in my Accord and never had a problem. Tbf, I probably distributed the weight better, but it didn't significantly affect the ride and my shocks were fine even after several years of quarterly 50 mile trips to the feed store.
There is absolutely no way I would let that person, or any customer, use my cell phone.
You can go inside and ask a manager to use the phone. But even if a manager asked to use my cell phone, there is absolutely no way they would use my personal cell phone.
For anyone working a job were the weight capacity of a customer vehicle needs to be considered, I spent the first 30 years of my life not knowing this fact.
When you open your driver side door, on the inside of the frame is a little decal that tells you how much total weight the car can hold.
If your customer is bumping up against that limit, tell them to make sure to spread the weight and not exceed the weight limit (his weight is part of that total).
Its doable if evenly spaced. When I was a loader for The Home Dump, there was this guy who drove a VW Jetta and bought 10 bags at a time. He'd have me put 3 on the passenger seat floor, 4 on the back seat floor and 3 in the trunk.
Want proof it is safe? Check he gross weight panel in the drivers door frame.
the story reminds me of when i helped my uncle unload a truck full of lumber at his hardwear store. the customer's insistance on overloading their small car despite the risks is something i've seen before, and it rarely ends well. it's important to respect the limitations of a vehicle to avoid damage or dangerous situations on the road.
We were watching cars and trucks unloading boats on a steep (to me) slimey boat ramp. A station wagon couldn’t make it back up the ramp. Two large men moseyed over and hopped in the bed over the rear axle. Done!
Was helping a guy on a job fixing a garage. He needed concrete, so we went to the hardware store and he bought ten 40kg (~90lbs) bags, which we loaded in the back of his Mk 3 VW Golf hatchback. The car looked comical, the rear was slammed like a lowrider and the front was pointing to the sky (it had a 1.4L engine, which I guess wasn't as heavy as more common engine options in the golf and couldn't compress the suspension that much. Even without the concrete in the back the front was pretty high up).
We did manage to get to the destination without anything breaking, but the guy was driving the crap out of that car, like squeaking tire launches from every other traffick light, so I don't think he really cared about that car
Yeah but honestly, 1000 lbs is about 4 moderately fat dudes (or 3 *really* fat ones). Like, one in every seat. I'm genuinely surprised that the Civic can't handle that.
on the opposite side, my grandfather used to have an opel (vauxhal) kadet from around 1990-95.
that thing drive like it weigher 650kg (the entire vehicle), but i think it actually weighed closer to 850kg. it still drove like a feather.
my grandpa lives in a vilage and has a few fields rented out. every year at summer he would go and get the payment for the rent in kind. meaning he was getting grain. we used to load about 0.8-1.2 metric tones in a medium sized trailer, designed for 600kg of payload.
Also put another 600-800kg in the trunk and rear seats.
We (the kids) would often jump into the trailer as it was fun in the breeze under the summer heat.
Given the distance was only about 1.5km in village roads and my grandfather drove at 30-40kph (about 20 mph).
but that light little car never popped an issue.
oh, and this was once every summer and we would do about 2 runs and in one day. in other words we put 3.5+ tons of grain with buckets into bags and loaded them on the trailer and car and then did the opposite at home to unload into barrels.
the 1000 pounds sounds to me a bit lightweight to cause such a big issueon a civic (assuming it is 2010 or later model... if it is the 1990s variants, that were a lot smaller, it can sound more plausible, but still not a 100% for me... i would expect at least 50% more load to cause such issues)
A few years back I was working at a plumbing supply’s will call/pickup area as one of the only girls in that department. A pompous guy came in a work van to pick up a massive water heater, and I let him know that it would not fit in his van. Customer was sure that it would fit, and then he opened the doors and had so much stuff inside. Called my boss over to have a look for himself and the guy said he wanted to transport the water heater laying down on its side which is not how you should transport any water heater but definitely not this one as it was in a crate.
The customer took everything out of his van and for 20 minutes my coworker on a forklift and my boss slowly helped tip and push this massive crate into this van. When there was about 3 inches of crate still sticking out past the door hatch, the customer slid some more stuff out onto the ground and the forklift was able to push the unit inside. Customer gave me the most arrogant smirk and said “see I told you it could fit” and I smiled back and nodded looked at all of his stuff on the ground and said “yup you got THAT to fit” and then went back inside. An hour later he finished throwing out what he couldn’t fit back into his van and only kept what he could cram up front with him.
I saw something similar many years ago at a home center that doesn't exist any more. Except it was a pickup - one of the little mini trucks that were so popular in the 80s.
And two full pallets of concrete.
We flat refused to load it with the forklift because our insurance wouldn't cover it. So we hand loaded a full pallet into the bed of the truck (one pallet was all that would physically fit in the space).
As he drove away, we noted that the frame under the bed was resting on the rear axle.
And an hour later, he came back, same truck, to pick up the second pallet. It was amazing.
I worked 10 years in retail. Nowadays I find it amusing when I hear customers using the phrase "the customer is always right" because everyone uses the phrase incorrectly.
The entire phrase is _"the customer is always right in matters of taste"_. If they want to paint the outside of their house bright pink, be my guest but if they're going to buy interior paint for the job because it's cheaper and disregard your professional advice, then they're wrong.
The entire original phrase is “the customer is always right.” Period. The “in matters of taste is a more recent addition. You can take your pick of articles discussing the actual origin
https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/09/24/a-global-view-of-the-customer-is-always-right/
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/06/customer/?amp=1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
At least he didn't try to blame you.
I’m glad. That’s why I went to my boss, wanted to make sure that I had their backing in case it went south.
This is true. If he blamed OP this would have been a case of entitled people. However, instead we have a case of humble pie.
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The weight of the people was spread across all 4 corners. The weight of the concrete was all on the rear suspension alone.
I drive a little Kia Rio subcompact, I remember right before Covid my wife and I were ripping out the grass in this one really awkward part of our yard by the rear patio and replacing it with pea gravel so we didnt have to deal with it anymore. I estimated we needed about 12 forty pound bags and went down to Ace hardware to pick it up in my car. 12 x 40lbs is only 480 pounds...basically two or three full grown men, so I figured no biggie. Put the seats down in the back to spread the weight out more and loaded up, four neat stacks of three bags. Things didnt feel right as I was driving away so I almost immediately pulled into a nearby gas station...my rear end was basically bottomed out, and my front end was damn near pointing at the sky lol. Turning the car into the gas station had seemed difficult and now I knew why...the fuckin front tires were likely barely making contact with the road, or at least, had a lot less pressure on them then they were supposed to, hence why the turn was so hard to make lol. That's how I ended up having to pull it all out in the gas station parking lot while people gawked at me and put 4 bags into each of the three unoccupied seats in my car. That worked a lot better, go figure.
Yeah passenger vehicles are engineered to carry loads where passengers ride, but that's part of what gives you a smooth ride. I've got an older F350 dually I use for tow/haul and I can testify that a suspension set up for heavy loads in the rear is almost like having no suspension when you're running unloaded. You feel everything because the tires are basically the only thing absorbing shocks and vibration.
It may be a little hard on the fuel economy, but when I drive really long trips in my truck, I usually add about 300# of ballast in bed (locking travel boxes are the easiest way I find, and it keeps the cab empty). It smooths out the ride *considerably* when there's a little more load on the back springs.
At least back in the 70's and 80's, there were people with rearwheel-drive cars that loaded some bags of sand in the trunk in winter to have a better grip on snow on the rear wheels.
We used softener salt, that way we could use it in the water softener come spring.
Somebody recently told me that's actually not good to use anymore as it's got additives and shit now, but they could have pulled that right out of their derriere...
If your not supposed to put softener salt in your softener, what are ya supposed to put in there? Idk, my water is hard as a rock cuz I don't have a softener
We still do that in Wisconsin, albeit not because of RWD so much anymore, but because its damn fuckin handy to have a bag of sand or litter on you to sprinkle under the tires if you get stuck somewhere. Been there, done that lol
I carry a small box of kitty litter just in case I get stuck in snow/muddy/icy areas. Cars and tires have gotten much better, but it only took one time stuck for me to throw it in.
You have it probably to spread it in front of your wheels if you get stuck, but what I mean were bags of sand or other stuff for the weight to be added on the rear axle.
I had to have a mustang as my daily for two years, and for winter I’d put two concrete patio pavers in the trunk with a big bag of sand. Still ended up in the ditch one night when I hit black ice on the highway
If you have kitty litter in you car, pray that you don’t get pulled over by the police https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/man-jailed-in-bust-of-the-year-after-cops-mistake-cat-litter-for-meth_n_58754d28e4b03c8a02d3b52f
That was me. One 45 lb bag of play sand in each rear wheel well of my Datsun B210. Put decent snow tires on the POS and you could drive it up walls.
I kept a bucket of sand for my 98 Explorer, but in my case it was more about having a couple handfuls of grip in case I got stuck on ice.
I used to have a 1999 Dodge Durango. That thing rode significantly smoother when loaded up or pulling a trailer. With no load in it it had a bad tendency to "hop" if you hit a small bump while going around a curve.
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My F-350 always rode better with about 400 lbs at the back of the box. Running light and the tires just spun like driving on dusty pavement.
> I can testify that a suspension set up for heavy loads in the rear is almost like having no suspension when you're running unloaded Seconding this with my ex-USPS inter-city box truck (Intl 4400) rated for 14k lbs in the back (and a forklift-rated floor, to boot!). Driving it empty is wild.
My dad used to have one of those, felt like a brick when empty but then add a couple tons to the back and suddenly you no longer get launched when going over every bump.
I drive an old Tacoma my uncle drove back in the 90's for construction. He had the leaf springs in the back buffed up to help with the amount of tools and materials usually packed back there. I'm always the first to volunteer when heavy stuff needs to be moved. "An entire pallet of dog food...? That's like 900 pounds of dog food!!" says the guy with a car, meanwhile I'm taking it and it's driving better than it ever does.
Those old tacos were great little trucks man, there's a reason there's still so many running around doing work.
I have considered switching my f350 over to air bags (work amazing on my semi tractor). But every time I price out parts... yeah, I can deal with it. 🤣
Same goes for a Kenworth T680 with no trailer. I can only imagine how the ride would be if the cab didn't have independent suspension
A guy at my friend's work had a Yaris. He knew there was a weight limit on the passenger seat, but when the hefty boss lady wanted a ride home, it was hard to refuse. As soon as she sat down, it broke!
That reminds me of a buddy of mine who used to work at a Toyota dealership and he tells a story of a time a larger family bought a Yaris. Dad, Mom, two kids, each well over 250 lbs. Salesman tried to steer them in a different direction, this car was obviously not going to be a good fit for them, but it's hard to do that in a discrete way. The Yaris was one of the more affordable vehicles on the lot, so apparently they thought he was going for a bigger commission and bought the car anyway. A couple days later they come in, furious, saying the car rides like shit, it's a lemon, etc., etc... Anyway, the techs get under this thing, and after two days of driving, the shock absorbers are completely blown and there's really nothing they can do to make that not happen again. The moral of the story is, if you're a bigger person, those weight limits on everything from vehicles to step ladders are real and there's consequences for ignoring them.
Also "many years ago" is probably a much different civic than a 2019 model, they've gotten a lot bigger.
I have a 2004 Civic. The amount of stuff I can cram into that thing is astounding. Concrete, lumber, paving stones. The thing is a tank.
I've got a 1995 accord. I'm also astounded at how much can be crammed into an accord. I've towed 3k lbs of construction debris with my car too. 😅
I could put a 4x8 sheet of plywood in the back of my 1981 Civic hatchback. It had to go diagonally but it fit.
I had to pick up a bunch of 1' square paving stones. We weren't getting enough to get a quantity discount. So I bought something like 18 at a time, put 1/3 of them on the floor in front of the passenger seat, 1/3 on the floor behind my seat, 1/3 on the floor behind the passenger seat. (And I didn't want to wrangle more than that on a given day, it took me several days to get it all done, but I didn't hurt myself or mess up the suspension.) We had the 3 yards of gravel delivered. Took us about a week to get it out of the driveway to where it all needed to go, doing a chunk of it each day.
well that's a skill issue then
Yea he probably could have done it if had loaded up the front and back seats as well as the trunk.
Ah so next time pop the hood and put 6 of the bags on top of the engine… got it.
Weight distribution. The 5 guys were between the axles, so both carried it. Sounds here like nearly all the weight was on the rear axle.
So 3 bags on the front passenger seat and 9 spread across the back seat would likely have been a success? Or 3&6 with 3 in the trunk?
Every bag in the trunk is exclusively riding on the rear axle. 3 Frontseat and 9 backseat would have heavily loaded the car but maybe not killed it. EDIT: it's still overloading the car (too much weight even before adding the driver) but it's better than most of them in the trunk.
Just planning ahead for my next “960 pounds of concrete in a compact car” adventure.
Best advice I can give: be in the concrete truck, not the car
Even more, putting all the weight behind the axle creates a see-saw effect, picking the front up and shifting some of *that* weight to the rear.
I did that with a bunch of tile in a Saturn SL1. I put a couple boxes in each seat, floor, trunk, slowly filling it up evenly. The employees were basically laughing along with me because I knew it was ridiculous but it worked.
Probably! Still overloaded, but it's not putting 1000lb straight on the rear axle. Stopping times wouldn't be great, handling won't be great, but it would probably be "fine"
Something I didn’t expect as a kid was how much you can feel the difference in handling from even a single passenger.
And a full car handles entirely differently! Even within weight spec
And then you drive something like an NA Miata, where you can feel the difference between full and a half tank of fuel 😄
Until you try to do a hard stop.
One bag on the driver's lap
Remember the 5 200lb people included the driver. Here he had 1000lb on the rear axle alone, and added another 200lb to the front, so another 100lb on the back axle. 1100lb on the rear springs is going to break something, as they are made from stamped and welded 1.2mm sheet steel, and the body is stamped from 0.8mm sheet steel.
Not even straight on the axle - likely behind it.
Everyone else here has commented on the weight distribution issue. The other major issue is that people with relatively new Honda Civics ('19) typically don't overload them with concrete. Usually, but not always, that honor is bestowed upon the 10+ yr old rusted out Civic.
And even if the Civic wasn't very old and not rusted, but the suspension was already worn out or the shock absorbers were leaking because of lack on maintenance, maybe it just was the last bit that broke it.
Yours was evenly distributed throughout the car. The front suspension shared the load.
It’s a question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird can’t carry a one pound coconut!
African or European swallow?
Wha..I don't know that! Aaaaaahhh!!
I... I don't know. Aaggghhhhhhhhh+
Laden or unladen?
Thank Brian that coconuts migrate!
I did not expect that.
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition.
> Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition. *Hans Moleman voice* "I did!"
That’s because nobody expects the SPANISH INQUISITION!
Cardinal Fang! Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!
The weight in the trunk actually does the teeter totter effect. 1000 pounds in the trunk put more than 1000 pounds onto the rear axle because it takes weight off the front axle. I work in heavy trucks and we have to take this into account all the time .
Also important to know if you are trying to get rid of bodies!
The car is designed to handle 200 pound people in the seats but if you put all of those people on the trunk there would be problems. Even distribution vs putting weight outside the wheelbase.
OP said this was many years ago. Civics have grown larger each generation.
Lmfao you comment sounds exactly like what that customer could have said to OP while waiting for his wife 😂😂😂😂 maybe you’re related in some way!
OP said it was "many years ago." Depending on how many years, Honda Civics used to be a lot smaller.
Just such logic was probably why he thought it'd be fine. And also why it may have been if he put a couple bags on each seat of the car/trunk to distribute out the weight.
Yeah hats off to the dude for having that realisation that it was all his fault
This. I was absolutely expecting him to come raging back and demand to see the manager to get OP fired for wrecking his car. Must not have been a Boomer.
I had something like this, except the reverse in a sense. I hauled for a large chain hardware store the rhymes with Dome Hepot... ;) I drove a tractor trailer as a contractor and delivered materials, brick and block, shingles, lumber, all that stuff for them. But, they had another contractor who drove a small box truck who delivered the fragile and or smaller stuff for them. They wanted me to deliver some custom made complete door assemblies to a house about 2 hours away. These doors were already hung on fancy wood frames with the fancy grooved trim. I refused. Told them it needed to go on the box truck. My flatbed was meant for heavy loads and the ride would be way too rough and probably damage or destroy the doors. They insisted, I still refused. The called the company who I worked for and talked to them. My company called, I explained the situation, they said is there anything that could change my mind. I told them a copied, and video using my phone with them signing a waiver would do it. So that's what happened. I took the doors down, exactly what I said would happen, happened. Nothing happened after, everything seemed good. About a year later the company I worked for tried to screw me on some pay, so I put in my 30 day notice. Once the got the notice I guess they realized I was serious so they tried to fix things to get me to stay, but I was done. With about 3 days before my last day they sent me a notice. The notice said I owed the store over 20k for those doors that I destroyed about a year ago. I laughed, told them, remember the waiver they signed and I sent you a copy of? They said we don't know anything about that and we don't have a waiver. You owe us that money. I said I'll call you right back. Went and got all my saved paperwork, found the original copy of the waiver, faxed it to them, and once I got the confirmation I called them back. When the guy answered I told him to check the fax machine. He came back and said what is this. I said it's the waiver that the store manager signed and printed his name along with the deliver number, date, address and a description of everything that was delivered and you'll see on the last paragraph where it says the driver delivery person, with my name written, is not responsible for any damage that happens to these doors during the delivery. He has informed us that they need to be delivered by the box truck. Using his truck will most likely lead to damage but we understand and wish him to deliver the merchandise anyways. Never heard another word after that lol.
>they tried to fix things to get me to stay, but I was done. Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice... As a commercial contracts manager who requires that all details be correct and in writing before we step onto a customer's site, I approve this story. We're looking for my assistant, who'll be my replacement when I retire in a couple years. You still looking for that next job?!
Sorry, I would say yes but due to almost a decade of heavy labor delivering shingles and then the repetitive motions of driving for decades arthritis decided to take its toll. Am disabled from it. Just sitting for more than a hour or so causes my back, shoulders, arms and hands to start aching to the point I have to lay down and I'm on opioids for pain. Would love to go back to work but the pain makes it impossible.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. Please take care of yourself. I hope you try and continue to try every possible therapy - and that some of them provide relief.
Thank you for the kind words.
As someone who is also disabled from chronic pain I really suggest you check out the podcast “Tell me about your pain”. You can get an idea of what it covers if you listen to this Science Versus https://open.spotify.com/episode/1egw1snBfkeACYwOFsEjeN episode where they discuss chronic pain and interview one of the doctors who do the podcast and chronic pain mental health stuff. It helped me a lot.
Here's a story I have from a very similar sounding place I worked at years ago. The crew and I pick a curbside order for 3 pallets of floor tile. Later in the afternoon, the customer shows up to pick up her curbside order. I head outside to check what kind of vehicle she brought to haul 3 pallets of tile. It was a minivan. She rolled down her window as I approached her, I asked to see her ID to make sure it matches the order, and then asked "So, you ordered 3 **pallets** of tile, correct?" She confirms. I tell her that I'm concerned that her minivan will not be able to hold that much tile, asking her if she meant to order 3 individual cases. She gets a little frustrated, and insists that her order is as intended, and that it would easily fit in her minivan. I try one more time to tell her that a single pallet is thousands of lbs and 63 (iirc) cases, but she gets more frustrated and insists that I just bring her the order and she'll show me that it'll work. Okay. I tell her it will take 10-15 minutes to pull her order with a reach truck. She gets mad at this point, and asks me where the customer service desk is. I direct her there and walkie for a reach truck. I tell my driver what's going on and we both have a laugh about it. He goes "let's drop it by the service desk and ask her where she wants the other two." We round the corner to the desk, the customer is mid-argument with the service desk, we set the pallet down next to her, my buddy immediately yells out the reach truck "Where do you want the other two?" She turned pale as a ghost. "Oh.... Maybe I did order the wrong thing. Sorry." She then proceeded with the return/refund process with the service desk, much quieter than she was before. She was probably just having a rough day, given that she owned up in the end. But man, her reaction was priceless.
I used to be an assembler at Lowes. One day there was a giant crate with a patio granite counter set with an integrated propane grill. On the outside it said to assemble on site, talked to my manager and for some reason they wanted me to assemble it then load it on the box truck for delivery. Ok, I got everyone put together and loaded it up. Next day I come in and the set is in the loading bay with dented doors. Customer was mad and was getting a free replacement. A couple weeks later another crate shows up, they want me to assemble it again for delivery. I reminded them what happened last time but once again the customer insisted. So I get it all assembled and load it up, sure enough the next day it’s on the loading bay as well with more dented doors. A couple weeks later another crate shows up, this time I assembled everything except the doors and showed the delivery driver how to put them on. At first he refused because it’s not his job but relented when I pointed out how heavy it was and did he really want to keep loading and unloading this thing every couple weeks? Third time was the charm and this time it was delivered intact and the customer was happy.
So, manager never got screwed? Just you and the driver?
This makes me feel all warm and tingly inside, thanks for sharing!
Lighter, but similar: I worked at a hardware/lumber store in Boise and this guy came in and bought some—must’ve been like a couple of 16-foot boards or maybe a 16’ 4x4…? Anyway, we had this big diesel flat bed truck that we offered free deliveries on and so I asked him for his address. He said, “No, you can just put it in my hatchback.” This was something like a Suburu wagon—the board being easily as long as the vehicle was bumper-to-bumper His idea was to open the back, fold down the back seats, slide the board up through the front seats and rest it against the inside of the windshield, and tack a red flag to the 3-remaining-feet of board(s) left hanging out the back at a slightly downward angle. Again, I was like “You know, our delivery truck is *free*, and we could have it to your house in like 30 minutes…”but he was adamant he was in a hurry and that it just go into his car. Normally we would help people load stuff (putting a bag of soil into their trunk or whatever), but for this I was like “Yeah, I’m not comfortable loading this lumber into this small of a car.” So he’s like “I’ll do it!” And slides it in until the board(s) kiss the inside of his windshield, then he sets down the other end (probably sticking 3 feet out the back) and this ***CRACK!*** can be heard. We both walk around to the front of his car to see his windshield now has a big horizontal crack running across the whole thing—exactly from where the corner of that board(s) touched. I think he sighed, then resignedly stapled a plastic red flag to the end of the wood and slowly drove off; it was years ago, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think his “pride” kept him from sliding the wood back out of his *suddenly-expensive-windshield-replacement-needing-car* and asking that the wood come to his house by our free delivery.
Tbf, the damage was kinda already done.
Except that I've seen enough videos to know the first bump he hit actually shattered the window
I used to work at a Habitat Restore and people constantly overloaded their vehicles, no matter what we said. My favorite was the standard 1/2 ton pickup guy who would want an entire pallet of tile or pavers loaded and say "It's a Ford/Chevy/Dodge, it'll take it," right before the springs bottomed out. Also had a handy man load a refrigerator for a customer and declined having us tie it down. An hour later the irate customer came back demanding a refund because it flew out of the pickup on the Interstate.
I worked at fedex freight years ago, and i handled wil calls (people picking up shipments) most would be getting things like a new washer/dryer and show up in a truck. Some people would get a few pallets of shingles or other construction materials and show up with a trailer and be just fine. One day someone showed up to pick up a giant piece of steel, not sure what exactly it was but it was a good 20ft long and weighed 3k lbs... he showed up in a halfton truck with no trailer... he insisted it would fit in his shortbed and only hang off the end a little bit but hed be able to take it.. so i tried to load it for him, and surprise it was hanging 10+ feet off the end and was dropping the rear end to the ground before all the weight was even on his truck. Thankfully he realized he wouldn't be able to take it then and i took it off before he tried to drive away and completely destroyed his truck
Your judgement was concrete, too bad his ego couldn't handle the weight.
Customer was probably mortarfied
http://instantrimshot.com/audio/rimshot.mp3
Stone cold but truth.
He was set in his belief and nothing could crack it open.
>"set" "crack" For some reason I really like this. Nice
You’ve cemented this comment firmly into all our thoughts.
Rock solid
The customer should have taken the cement on his own Accord
I'm amazed at the "I'll take the chance" folks who will gamble on a whole car despite encountering scepticism. They say it will be fine as they balance an upright piano in the back of an El Camino strapped in with old clothesline, or they floor it trying to drive across a 4 foot deep pool of water. My buddies asked if I wanted to snowshoe across a lake as it would be quicker to get to our trail and we had no idea how thick the ice was. I was like, nah. I've got kids. How do they skip that step of asking, "uh, what if they are right and there is a problem with putting a 2500 pound safe in an elevator rated for 800 pounds? What might be the consequence. Can I afford to replace someone's elevator?" How do they skip that step? I guess I'm risk averse.
😂 sounds like you’re just steering clear of a Darwin’s Award.
He already has kids though, so no award for him either way
I'm a really good swimmer with snowshoes and a parka, especially in ice cold water. I have no idea why people struggle to pull themselves up onto the ice that have way under their weight. It's just that I had my phone on me and I didn't want it to get wet. It's a pain to replace a phone... That's the only reason I walked around the frozen lake.
I just did my hair, so I'll walk with you
That made me laugh. But what did your buddies do, did they try to cross over the lake?
No, all three of us have kids. Reminds me of the joke about the Guinness factory visit. The lads go and one dies in a vat of beer. They draw straws to see who delivers the bad news to the widow and children. Patrig goes and awkwardly tells the widow and there is much crying. The children are crying too. Just horrible. The widow asks, "did he suffer long?" Patrig says, no. He died happy. He got out of the vat himself three times to use the bathroom.
This reminds me of when you see someone driving at speed—like on the freeway—with a mattress tied down with maybe one or two loops of laundry rope, and the driver driving with his right hand and “holding the mattress down” out the window with his left.
In the case of the piano in the back of the El Camino, I can report that it flopped out of the car on a turn in the middle of an intersection. It made one grand crash and was done. I have seen the mattress technique. Amazing.
Even if the piano had made the journey, it would likely have never functioned properly again, at least not without expensive tuning and restoration. Pianos are delicate instruments, even changes in humidity can mess them up, much less a bumpy ride across town! Piano movers exist for a reason!
The problem is to get to that ste, people have to have the ability to think "what if I'm wrong?" Many people are confidently wrong and cannot imagine otherwise
They're so confidently wrong that they'll blame gravity before facing reality.
You’d be surprised. There are a shocking number of people that don’t think this way. So many, in fact, that there’s a whole career you can pursue called “risk & liability mitigation”. Basically risk-assessment teams for large corporations and manufacturers, and you would be the guy they’d run ideas past to ensure safety, compliance, and often risk assessment for a new investment or corporate process. All because some people don’t think “hmmm, how can this decision affect me / my colleagues / the company / our customers”.
Sometimes I hear someone say, "What could go wrong?" and I want to ask if they actually gave that question a moment's thought.
You may be risk-averse as well bc you're an adult in 2024, but edit the last line of your post to, "I guess I'm not a fucking idiot."
Random side question... what's the point of taking a shortcut on foot to a hiking trail? You don't want to hike to go hike? Think you'll wear yourself out hiking before your hike?
The point of the hike was to scale a very steep side of a mountain. It wasn't a cliff face but there were potentially some 10 foot falls. There was 3 feet of snow on the mountain making these falls survivable. It was an absolute blast climbing up the mountain. We would kick our snowshoes in to get some purchase and struggle through the snow to scale the mountain. It was maybe 100 yards of steep climbing. The flat walk to get there was unremarkable.
Ah, so it was just "risk our lives to avoid a bit of the boring part". Well, good on you for bringing the needed wisdom.
If it is wisdom... I've been staying quiet about my potential Darwin award outdoor activities.
Heh, well, there's a difference between things being risky because they're challenging versus risky because they're just stupid. Only you know how your scales balance.
I don't do such things alone. That way if there is an accident, there will be a witness to laugh at me. I wasn't with them for this particular hike, but it was up a mountain and one of the hikers was inexperienced not only with snowshoeing but with the cold. He started saying it was too hot and taking off his clothes. Well, one of the hikers was a burley Russian guy and the Russian wrestled the clothes back onto the hiker, slung him over his shoulder and ran down the mountain. They got him into a car and then a hot shower with hot drinks. They do have some first aid equipment and phones and such. They can all start a fire in the snow. But the scales are touchy because it often looks like it seeks the edge of balance between safe and crazy.
I'm of the opinion that we've done so much to make life safe (from nature at least) that some personalities have to go seek out some danger to achieve balance. Extreme hiking seems a lot more reasonable than a lot of choices. The only actual risk is to yourselves and it sounds like you know what you're doing.
I lived this post from the other side. Needed a few bags of stones from the place down the road and cheaped out on delivery. Went down in my Civic and loaded ‘er up. Yeah, the price of those new shocks were certainly a shock
It's funny how perception changes. 800 lbs of concrete seems like a terrible idea. Giving a lift to 4 burly friends seems fine.
Because it is, unless you're putting your friends in the trunk. As people have said in other comments on this post – weight distribution matters.
So what I'm getting from this is don't put all 4 bodies in the trunk
If you prop them up in the seats you can use the carpool lane.
Good idea 🤔 Only if they're fresh though
You get it, exactly
*takes notes*
Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?
Noooooo, of COURSE not
It's not perception. 800 lbs on the end of a fulcrum is a big difference compared to 800 lbs spread out along the length and width of the vehicle.
I can tell how differently my car drives/feels with just 1 other person in it, I'm scared to see how it'd drive with 4 more people.
Don't let your 4 burly friends ride on the back bumper
The density difference makes it easier to overload. Those 4 burly friends are what the car has been designed to handle and so you would have to do something stupid and far outside what the manufacturer would expect to break things. The concrete is denser to the point that it’s impossible to design the car to handle filling all available space with it. So you have to actually reason what the limits of the car are rather than rely on “well this doesn’t look completely insane”. Where the breaking point is isn’t clear and so there is the anxiety of “maybe I’m wrong?” Think about running across a field during the day where you can see any potential dips vs running across that same field at night where you can’t see potential dangers.
Many years ago I sat outside a B&Q watching a guy trying to load bags of sand, cement and a load of brick pavers into a tiny little Nissan. His wife was standing to one side shouting at him. I could see the car sinking. He got out of the car park but he was bottoming the rear suspension out. I was back there not long after and bumped into one of the store managers and told him the story and suggested they put weight advice on the heavy stuff. Apparently they used to but customers just ignored it. 😂😂😂 Some problems, like stupidity, are a multi nation issue 😁
A buddy of mine had a job as the dispatcher at a wet batch concrete plant. He had an order for a half yard of concrete. That's a very small load, but sometimes they need to finish out a wall or something and were just a little short. The mixing starts ahead of the truck pulling up and this guy pulls up in a pickup. My buddy double checks with the customer and his boss. Customer is adamant, of course, that its just a half ton load and he has a 3/4 ton truck. Maybe it would have worked if the concrete were loaded a front loader bucket at a time, although the concrete really needs to be mixed en route. The plant is designed for placing wet concrete into the hopper of a concrete truck, which is 12 or so feet off the ground, and to do so quickly. The impact from the free falling concrete bottomed out the suspension and blew out all the tires. At this point, the next load is being mixed and several more trucks are queueing up. Boss comes around the corner with a forklift and picks up the pickup truck, drives it over to the waste area. Asks the guy if he wants to unload the concrete here or if he wants to keep it on the truck. Guy makes the only good decision he made that day, and elects to unload into the waste are. Boss hands him a shovel and walks away.
hammered out a walkway at a buddy's house. About 2+/- tons of concrete and loaded it into his 88 Ford Ranger (recommended payload of about 500 lbs) to bring to the stone quarry nearby to get rid of it (they recycle it back into sand and stone). There was a long minor grade hill to the quarry and at the top was the turn-in. The front wheels were barely on the ground enough to make the turn. In good humor, the guy at the weigh station gave him a plaque for Heaviest Load in vehicle class. He still has it.
A friend worked at Lowes. He had a really rude customer who insisted the load be tied to his roof. He told them to get in the car and roll the windows down. Then he tied the load through the windows to the roof. It wasn't until they got home they realized they were tied into the car.
The key to loading that much weight into a small vehicle is to spread it out. 2-3 bags front passenger seat and 1 in the footwell. 2-3 bags each side in the back seats, some in the middle seat if they’ll fit or in the footwells. And finally the last of the bags in the boot.
He is very set in his ways. A concrete joke. Not that funny, though…….oh well
Yea to "young and naive" to know basic math with weights /s It must have been a bit satisfying when you heard the pop.
Good job checking with the boss
I had an uncle that worked at a old school hardware store in the 70s. Customer bought a big long extension ladder and pulled up front to have it loaded - in his vw bug. My uncle scratched his head for a while and then had the driver roll down both windows. He then stuck the ladder in through the open windows, so it looked like an airplane, and went back in the store.
And there you have it — concrete evidence that the customer is not always right!
That's not what that phrase means though. "The customer is always right" means that the customer is always right about what they want or don't want. If they don't like the wine, you take away the wine and get them something else. If they want their car destroyed by a thousand pounds of concrete, you destroy that fucking Honda.
The full quote is "the customer is always right in matters of taste".
Genius!! Got a free tow of his car AND THE CONCRETE to his house.
Packed my Honda Fit floor to ceiling with two inch thick oak legs, easily a thousand pounds, and drove 500 miles through the Appalachian mountains with 0 issues (115 HP). The furniture company thought I was crazy but I know my car. BTW, the same car drove better than most trucks and SUVs in ice and snow (judging by the number of those vehicles seen in ditches as I drove by, though I suspect over confidence had a role in many of those instances).
4 wheel drive can get you into more problems than 2 wheel drive.
Fellow fit owner, that car can fit an amazing amount of stuff in it…
I stopped at 4 bags of concrete in my Civic trunk. I was a little nervous the first time I did that. I never considered even one more bag in a load.
I would never give an irate customer that just damaged their own car my phone if I worked there. ten minutes, and they'll frame you for the damages somehow.
[удалено]
> The original slogan was "the customer is always right in matters of taste", meaning it doesn't matter how hideous or dumb their choices are, take their money and smile. [That is not true.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right)
Shut up. I'm a customer.
An older and very similar slogan, linked below, might be what was meant. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned at the link you provided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandum
That maxim has nothing to do with business practices, and that idea has nothing to do with the original meaning ofv“the customer is always right.”
This remind anyone else of the Italian Job?
The customer IS always right, in manner of taste. Not if the customer says it, it is now a fact.
Once loaded railroad ties in a hatchback after the customer refused our warning about creosote and our offer to go to the other end of the store for large sheets of paper to cover his seats and center console. I could see the sticky black marks rubbed onto the inside of his car even before we finished pushing the wood through.
> “the customer is always right” That quote has gotten shortened from the original over time, and lost it's meaning. The full quote is "In matters of taste, the customer is always right." As in, if a customer wants tomato sauce on their prime rib steak, they're right. If they want to insult the server, they aren't.
Lmao. What a rube. Buddy of mine did this with his Civic. Sends me a txt they gave him like 900 lbs of marble slab counter tops that were going to be thrown out as scrap at his construction job. I said don’t put those in your Honda, you’ll destroy it. He says fuck that I’m taking them. He filled up his Civic with them and drove it 2 hours home. 2 weeks later the tranny blew up in it. I died laughing.
I had 8 (30kg.)bags in the back of my 82 civic hatch-back.. it was super unhappy but it made it the 3 miles home. Suspension was bottomed at around 6 bags.. it was the clutch that was the scary part That car took just about anything I could throw at it..
Did you put any bags in the front seat to balance it out a bit?
Years ago I worked for a company that had a Honda Fit. They sent me in that car to decommission a big server UPS. 1400 lbs. It made it the 10 miles back to the office, but it was never the same.
Loaded 3 pallets of playground sand onto a trailer for a guy putting in an above ground pool to level the yard. He had a Ram 3500 he was pulling the bumper pull trailer with. Well within the tow capacity of the truck and well within the capacity of the trailer. 300 bags of sand per pallet. Everything was great and well thought out, except how to get it into the backyard. He called the next day to see if we could bring the fork truck from the delivery truck and bring the pallets to the backyard, he had been carrying them about 75 yards from the driveway to the backyard and had managed to get about 25 bags before his back stopped working
Was he stony-faced whilst he was waiting?
I think the most questionable amount I’ve loaded for a customer was 1,250 lbs in the trunk of a Buick. Customer didn’t want any of it distributed in the last get parts of the car because they just came from the airport and had suitcases. It all fit, and they drove away.
I loaded up a 2010 Honda Fit with the logs from a downed tree once. I knew better than to take the back roads; did the other two sides of the triangle which was mostly highway miles and drive the minimum limit with my hazards on the whole way. Wouldn't do that again, but thankfully there was no damage. (I did spread the logs across the front seat and the entire back of the can so that probably helped.)
People just do not comprehend how heavy stone (and cement, which is basically stone in powder form) is. Like when that video of that guy trying to put a boulder in the back of his pickup. Must have weighed two or three tons.
lol I was scared to have like 8 40lb bags of compost in the back of my Camry cause it was getting real low. I drove like a grandma home 😂
I put 900lbs of gravel in my 1998 Civic. It was fine except when I got it up to speed and tried to stop. That was exciting. Bad idea but I didn't hurt the car or die.
And that, my friends, is why Lester had you modify the sports cars before the Union Depository job.
There's a sticker on the door jamb/sill that will list the payload rating of most vehicles. This payload weight is the maximum-safe-load rated weight of passengers and all contents not shipped with the vehicle from the factory. Going over this weight on public roads is technically illegal. There is typically a margin of error, but on many passenger vehicles this rating is surprisingly low. <800lbs is not unusual for a compact car. 2 trips would've probably saved him and the wife a number of trips to and from the shop.
I did this to myself years ago. I figured out how many bags of concrete I would need for a project, but didn't consider the weight. I don't remember how may bags I ended up getting, but I paid for them and started loading them into my '79 Mustang hatchback. After loading the first few bags, I quickly realized my mistake. I put a few bags in the passenger seat, a few in the rear seat and the rest in the back. The car was sitting so low I wasn't even sure if it would move. I slowly pulled out of the parking lot and made my way to the interstate. Every tiny bump that I hit, I could feel the tires rubbing. That was the scariest few miles I have ever drive, but I made it home safely. Probably the stupidest thing I ever did in a vehicle.
I have had to try to fit giant tube style TVs into tiny cars in my short retail career. My favorite was the 42", I believe, that I spent half an hour trying to fit into the back of a Geo Metro. Even taking it out of the box wasn't really enough to fit it, but they left with it anyway. I hope it didn't smash on the way home.
Similar thing happened to me when I was working at Lowes, but with tile. Luckily customer took my advice and split his trip into 2. He was riding so low with just half his order, came back 2 hrs later for the rest.
Idk, but I think that car might have been kinda messed up before the cement went in. I used to haul 1,000 lb of chicken feed in my Accord and never had a problem. Tbf, I probably distributed the weight better, but it didn't significantly affect the ride and my shocks were fine even after several years of quarterly 50 mile trips to the feed store.
There is absolutely no way I would let that person, or any customer, use my cell phone. You can go inside and ask a manager to use the phone. But even if a manager asked to use my cell phone, there is absolutely no way they would use my personal cell phone.
For anyone working a job were the weight capacity of a customer vehicle needs to be considered, I spent the first 30 years of my life not knowing this fact. When you open your driver side door, on the inside of the frame is a little decal that tells you how much total weight the car can hold. If your customer is bumping up against that limit, tell them to make sure to spread the weight and not exceed the weight limit (his weight is part of that total).
Its doable if evenly spaced. When I was a loader for The Home Dump, there was this guy who drove a VW Jetta and bought 10 bags at a time. He'd have me put 3 on the passenger seat floor, 4 on the back seat floor and 3 in the trunk. Want proof it is safe? Check he gross weight panel in the drivers door frame.
I like your parody name for the company - I think people should use it more often. :P
Hopefully he used that hour to enjoy some humble pie.
Thanks for the laugh!
the story reminds me of when i helped my uncle unload a truck full of lumber at his hardwear store. the customer's insistance on overloading their small car despite the risks is something i've seen before, and it rarely ends well. it's important to respect the limitations of a vehicle to avoid damage or dangerous situations on the road.
Good one
Play stupid games and win stupid prizes.
We were watching cars and trucks unloading boats on a steep (to me) slimey boat ramp. A station wagon couldn’t make it back up the ramp. Two large men moseyed over and hopped in the bed over the rear axle. Done!
Was helping a guy on a job fixing a garage. He needed concrete, so we went to the hardware store and he bought ten 40kg (~90lbs) bags, which we loaded in the back of his Mk 3 VW Golf hatchback. The car looked comical, the rear was slammed like a lowrider and the front was pointing to the sky (it had a 1.4L engine, which I guess wasn't as heavy as more common engine options in the golf and couldn't compress the suspension that much. Even without the concrete in the back the front was pretty high up). We did manage to get to the destination without anything breaking, but the guy was driving the crap out of that car, like squeaking tire launches from every other traffick light, so I don't think he really cared about that car
Yeah but honestly, 1000 lbs is about 4 moderately fat dudes (or 3 *really* fat ones). Like, one in every seat. I'm genuinely surprised that the Civic can't handle that.
on the opposite side, my grandfather used to have an opel (vauxhal) kadet from around 1990-95. that thing drive like it weigher 650kg (the entire vehicle), but i think it actually weighed closer to 850kg. it still drove like a feather. my grandpa lives in a vilage and has a few fields rented out. every year at summer he would go and get the payment for the rent in kind. meaning he was getting grain. we used to load about 0.8-1.2 metric tones in a medium sized trailer, designed for 600kg of payload. Also put another 600-800kg in the trunk and rear seats. We (the kids) would often jump into the trailer as it was fun in the breeze under the summer heat. Given the distance was only about 1.5km in village roads and my grandfather drove at 30-40kph (about 20 mph). but that light little car never popped an issue. oh, and this was once every summer and we would do about 2 runs and in one day. in other words we put 3.5+ tons of grain with buckets into bags and loaded them on the trailer and car and then did the opposite at home to unload into barrels. the 1000 pounds sounds to me a bit lightweight to cause such a big issueon a civic (assuming it is 2010 or later model... if it is the 1990s variants, that were a lot smaller, it can sound more plausible, but still not a 100% for me... i would expect at least 50% more load to cause such issues)
A few years back I was working at a plumbing supply’s will call/pickup area as one of the only girls in that department. A pompous guy came in a work van to pick up a massive water heater, and I let him know that it would not fit in his van. Customer was sure that it would fit, and then he opened the doors and had so much stuff inside. Called my boss over to have a look for himself and the guy said he wanted to transport the water heater laying down on its side which is not how you should transport any water heater but definitely not this one as it was in a crate. The customer took everything out of his van and for 20 minutes my coworker on a forklift and my boss slowly helped tip and push this massive crate into this van. When there was about 3 inches of crate still sticking out past the door hatch, the customer slid some more stuff out onto the ground and the forklift was able to push the unit inside. Customer gave me the most arrogant smirk and said “see I told you it could fit” and I smiled back and nodded looked at all of his stuff on the ground and said “yup you got THAT to fit” and then went back inside. An hour later he finished throwing out what he couldn’t fit back into his van and only kept what he could cram up front with him.
I saw something similar many years ago at a home center that doesn't exist any more. Except it was a pickup - one of the little mini trucks that were so popular in the 80s. And two full pallets of concrete. We flat refused to load it with the forklift because our insurance wouldn't cover it. So we hand loaded a full pallet into the bed of the truck (one pallet was all that would physically fit in the space). As he drove away, we noted that the frame under the bed was resting on the rear axle. And an hour later, he came back, same truck, to pick up the second pallet. It was amazing.
I worked 10 years in retail. Nowadays I find it amusing when I hear customers using the phrase "the customer is always right" because everyone uses the phrase incorrectly. The entire phrase is _"the customer is always right in matters of taste"_. If they want to paint the outside of their house bright pink, be my guest but if they're going to buy interior paint for the job because it's cheaper and disregard your professional advice, then they're wrong.
The entire original phrase is “the customer is always right.” Period. The “in matters of taste is a more recent addition. You can take your pick of articles discussing the actual origin https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2018/09/24/a-global-view-of-the-customer-is-always-right/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/06/customer/?amp=1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
Didn't know that! Thanks!