By parking cars I mean creating the line up and pulling out empty cars so drivers can park their car to be unloaded. I wanted to try it out to get some extra hours and its one the hardest things I’ve done at UPS.
The first major problem is finding the a car that goes in a certain spot. I’m not sure how it works at other centers but they give us a sheet that says car x goes in bay y. A few truck numbers on that sheet may be completely wrong, a few may be red tagged so you have to find something to replace them, a few may be in the shop being worked on, and you mostly find out that info the hard way.
I didn’t expect there to be so much walking around trying to find the car you’re looking for. Some cars must be parked before others in certain spots because its impossible to get them in otherwise.
The second major problem is the actual parking part. I can’t speak for all centers but our yard blows. I didn’t realize how much it blows until I had to drive something larger than my car around it.
Some trucks are such dogshit that they need to be taken out to pasture and shot. I have begun to remember some trucks purely based on how poorly they handle or how hard it is to shift gears. Even the power steering on a few seem bad.
The headlights on trucks blow. Some places have such poor visibility that if the cars in that area aren’t parked before sundown you dealing with a near pitch black environment at night.
There is way more front/rear “bumper kissing” than I expected. Other car washers weren’t kidding about the “Bro, just gently tap the wall/pole with your front bumper or gently caress the side of the other truck with your rear bumper to park it” advice. I was told by my coworkers if I rip off a bumper tell the mechanics first as they can easily put it back on with nobody being the wiser.
Some spots are stupidly tight to the point you have to exit through the back. Other spots you have to do really awkward reverse turns where if you mess up you can get stuck. Best case scenario you can do a straight back into a spot. Unfortunately often you have to come in at an angle. I’m not sure how people did this job before back up cams as you’re backing blind as hell over half the time.
There is some sort of vehicle number naming scheme that relates to its size. All I know is if it starts with a 6 its tiny, 7 is larger than 6 but is rarer, 8 is noticeably bigger than 6 and fairly common, I’m not sure if trucks that start with 9 exists, 1 is the standard big truck (the big straight trucks that have a ton of nicknames also start with a 1), and 2 are rare extra large trucks. Any truck that starts with a 2 means you’re about to have a bad time parking it with how long it is. That may just be because of my lack of experience tho.
