Yesterday I went to Sam's Club to pick up fifty, 50lbs bags of calcium chloride.
Well it was on a pallet, and as you know thats about 2550lbs with pallet and all.
Well the guy comes out with a forklift, and I was watching him, thinking since he loads and unloads all day he would know what he was doing. Well i thought wrong. The idiot set all of the weight on my tailgate!!!!!!!!!! How do you expect that not to break! So i had to file a claim with sam's club, and then go get an estimate to get it repaired. At least i get a brand new tail gate out of it. But it just makes me mad people don't care about other peoples things!!!. It also broke the litte thing off my bed that holds the tailgate on there, hopefuly that can be repaired without a whole new bed, because it ripped the metal right off of the bed.

 

O U C H
Sorry about your luck.
Iv often wondered just how much training, if any at all, those yokels received to get that job.
Iv watched the ones at Loews and am amazed no one has been injured.

 

That will be a cossstly mistake for the young forklift driver! You'll be suprised how much that little thingy ( I can't think of the proper terminology either! ) that hold the tailgate in will cost to put back in too, besides the cost of a tailgate!

 

Some idiot almost did that to my truck at home depot with a pallet of windsor wall, 2,500-3,000lbs. I said screw that load it by hand, and they did.

 

From chapter 23-16 of the Service Manual 'That little thingy' is referred to as the "Latch Striker." My work here is done.

 

Sorry but you will never get the paint to match...And it will never drive right again, if that little thingy isn't lined up straight it could cause a gap which will interfere with your drag and make it pull to one side or the other....IMHO I would say its totaled.

 

Actually the latch striker would be up where the latch is. If you look closely, the picture he is showing is at the bottom of the tailgate, and according to the FSM ,page 180987456, it is reffered to as the collar. The pieces that are on the tailgate are reffered to as the pivots.

INSTALLATION

1. Position tailgate collar on left hand pivot pin and slide tailgate to the left.
2. Raise tailgate until the notch in the right hand collar aligns with the pivot pin.
3. Connect the tailgate check cables. (Refer to 23 - BODY/TAILGATE/CHECK CABLE - INSTALLATION)

 

A few years ago bought a pallet of cement at Lowe's. Wanted it loaded on a trailer hooked to my truck. Idiot sets the pallet down on the back of the trailer, backed out and when I told him that wasn't gonna do, trailer was trying to lift the back of the truck off the ground, he put the forks against the pallet and went to push it on further. Before I could stop him, he backed out a foot and rammed it. Broke the park pin in the transmission. Got the manager out there and when he got stupid, so did I, in a very loud voice informed both the manager and the forklift driver how stupid I thought they both were. Refused to move it until they got the area manager out there, blocked the loading area for well over an hour. Tried to get the TV news folks out for some free publicity but they had a traffic accident they were working. They paid for a transmission rebuild and I got my money back on the cement. Also got $300 for loss of wages and inconvenience.

 

What do you expect from Sam's? They are Walmart owned and operated. Expect to fight it.

Jon

 

They already covered it all. I went and got my estimate today earlier. It entails a new tailgate and a bit of other work. The paint should match pretty easy. I just recently had it repainted.

 

That's why the tailgate stays home if I'm getting a pallet load of anything.

 

As far as training...I've been working on equipment and have worked in places like that a few times part time and training??? The first forklift training I got was at United Rentals, real classroom go out and test afterwords training. Everyone else said, "it's the school of hard knocks for you".It's been 20 years and that was the first real training on a industrial forklift.

I don't let anybody load into the back of my truck, I'd just assume hand load it myself and let them go wander around the mega home center and leave me alone. I usually have three kids with me and I've loaded 16 foot 2x10x16's by myself while home center guy looks the other way inside, so I usually give the kids a bit more freedom....." oh yeah, you can play with that...pick it up, noooo, don't do that..put it over three more isles, they like it when you do that."

I don't trust them guys on a several thousand pound machine, no offense but that's probably the first time they've had to operate something like that and I prefer they don't have their learning curve on my truck and trailer. Anyhow, at least they are paying for it and by the sounds of it pretty much hassle free!!

 

I watched a mexican driving a small wheel loader trying to load mulch in a back of a nice dodge dually. Well he ended up crushing the whole side of the guys bed. Don't know what happened after that but I bet it wasn't pretty.

 

I always remove the gate prior to loading the truck. Only time I dont is when I'm picking up a yard of gravel I always get a little scared when the frontend loader is hovering over the bed. But after all its a truck and I use it as such but so far so good.

 

outa curiosity, was your tailgate down when this happened? How did he pull your strikers out if it was?

btw, I have our shop guys load stuff if my truck all the time and the worse thing that has happened is I dented the top of my tailgate with a forklift.

They have even loaded me with the 36K forklift on icy surfaces and not damaged my truck.