McCarthy Haulage Driver Sucks!

Living, as we do, in the country it’s often more cost effective to have things delivered than drive to collect them. Even more so with my bulk order of potting compost and fertiliser.

Now we’re used to different delivery men. Some cover this area all the time and get their vans up tracks I’d think twice about in a 4×4 but there’s always the exception and McCarthy Haulage certainly are exceptional. Exceptionally bad in my experience.

Earlier in the day our solar panels arrived and the deliveryman reversed up the track, making unloading into the back field a ten minute job.

McCarty Haulage’s driver, however, couldn’t get his wagon up there. Since I’ve had one delivery from them in the past, this didn’t come as a surprise. In fact it’s nice of them to employ such poorly skilled drivers in a recession.

Anyway, I was prepared for this and had arranged for my neighbour to give me a hand. He’d been waiting with his 2.7 tonne tipping trailer attached to his huge 4×4. Our cunning plan was to take the load from the lorry and up the track in the trailer.

We’ll the driver re-lit his fag, made himself comfortable in his seat and explained, lethargically, how he only had 2 hours on his tacho and no time to mess about.

He’d dump the pallets on the public highway and we could take it from there.

Well I explained this would mean a lot of work for us and if we put the load straight in the trailer, it would save all that. Apparently he hadn’t time for handballing and it was illegal for us to go in the back of his wagon to do that. “Must be more illegal than smoking in your lorry cab?” I thought but didn’t say.

So I explained that we could just pop the pallet on the tail lift, drop the tail lift level with the trailer and load it in with the palette truck. This seemed to confuse our driving-challenged delivery man who said he’d ring his boss.

Quite why he needed to ring his boss wasn’t clear but after five minutes I did say we could have unloaded one pallet by now, to which he responded by rolling up his window, presumably to stop me overhearing his conversation.

Well we stood around in the cold for another quarter of an hour as he sat in his cab sending smoke signals to head office. We’d had enough so I told him we were going for a cup of tea and give me a shout if he wanted to unload. Amazingly he sat there for another 10 minutes before just driving off.

What’s really funny in an ironic way is this statement on McCarthy Haulage’s web site. “Aware that customer service is paramount, McCarthy Haulage prides itself on its flexibility and can-do attitude…”

Never, in the history of marketing BS has a statement been so at odds with reality. My advice to anyone is don’t use McCarthy Haulage they are the worst delivery company it has ever been my misfortune to come across.

How my bulk compost is going to come is, happily, not my problem but I do feel sorry for the supplier who are one of the best companies I deal with and have been badly let down by these people.


Update

Saturday, 3rd March. After a number of telephone calls apologising about this fiasco, Mcarthy re-delivered.  Same sort of wagon but a different driver. He wasn’t sure it would make it up the track but was happy to get the pallets onto his tail lift and helped us load onto the trailer.

He even walked up the track and helped us unload from the trailer, which was above and beyond. We didn’t ask him or expect him to do that.  It’s such a shame that we didn’t have him originally, I’d have been singing their praises.

Incidentally, the unloading process took about half an hour, the same time the first guy wasted sulking in his cab.  Anyway, we’re stocked up ready for the season now.

 

 

Posted in Rants and Raves
4 comments on “McCarthy Haulage Driver Sucks!
  1. I once had 4 pallets of kiln bricks delivered by DHL – 1.5tonnes per pallet, too much for his tail gate. It was xmas eve lunchtime and we both wanted to get away. He asked me where my fork-lift truck was – I didn’t have one. Why the brick company didn’t check that with me i still don’t understand.

    Anyway, short and the long of it was, instead of unloading the bricks one-by-one (1200 of them) he unloaded the bricks with a pallet lift and his tail-gate, eventually breaking his tail-gate. He just said it gave him an excuse to get a new one fitted (he actually said that before we started!) I’ll never forget that – very much can-do.

  2. graham lindley says:

    i work for a medium size haulage company and from what ive read so far is all to typical , we deliver as sorts of goods including bulk fertilizer to farms , slabs ,bricks , timber etc , sometimes to the point where the 44 ton artic has to be pulled out of a field by tractor , for us nothing is to much trouble really , i see lots of problems every day mainly with the larger haulage companies, or drivers who are just lazy , lets just hope more of these large and lazy ones keep losing work and smaller firms like the one i work for keep going

  3. Jackie Hill says:

    Must be the same driver who delivered 1 pallet of soft toys to my next door neighbour! He parks across my drive blocking my access, even though he could park at the delivery address. He then stands in front of my house and makes a “rude gesture” with his hand, intimidating I’m a “W—–r”! Since I’m a 61 year old female, I think he may need to go to specsavers! Takes him 45 minutes to deliver (after having a snack in his cab!)

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