I placed an order from Midway for primers from in stock. UPS has not taken possession of the order for reasons of not having hazmat driver available. This is a first for me. Is this common? Anyone else have this problem? I wonder how Amazon is able to make two days delivery and ups/fx can’t get drivers?
Hazmat Drivers
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Charlie98
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They are hiring anyone who can hold a steering wheel right now... the driver may have his CDL, but not his hazmat yet. It happens.
AgPilot
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Primers have been showing up pretty regular here. Shelves are full at a couple stores. Nobody is buying them tho. Due to they are charging $99 a brick for SPP. Powder is sitting too due to the $45 a lb price. Sure a few folks are buying but they are definitely not flying off the shelves. Hopefully this will pull prices down.
I believe I’m having this exact problem right now. Tracking was on schedule but now shows a “hazmat exemption.” Now two days late and tracking is not updating.
GeoDudeFlorida
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I could be wrong but I don’t think Amazon ships hazmat.
Charlie98
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You don't live in Dallas. It's still bare shelves here...
IMAhobbyist
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UPS vehicles are not placarded as a rule and as result the drivers are not required to have a hazardous endorsement. In all likelihood UPS spots up X number of trailers daily at Midway for outbound orders and they may have agreement to comply with DOT that said number of trailers shall not have more than X quantity of hazardous, if xtra drivers are not available to help with the overflow I could see delay happening.
Charlie98
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That's usually what causes some shipping delays... the daily trucks are already full, weight-wise. I never considered the HazMat RQ requirements... although that almost seems a given coming from somewhere like Midway.
GeoDudeFlorida
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That’s also why we see such big differences in supply regionally. Some routes have drivers; some don’t.
IMAhobbyist
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Kinda had to chuckle at Charlie98's statement about trailers being full weight wise....In the midwest I have seen scales at only two UPS locations, West Pt on Indiana Toll Road and Toledo. Those scales were there so triple drivers could align the trailers in descending wt. only, never saw them used for anything else. A trailer was considered full when you needed help closing the door.
Charlie98
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When packages are scanned in as they are loading them, they know how much weight is on the trailer. Further... that's how they know if they exceed the Reportable Quantity restrictions on HazMat. If UPS doesn't actually have scales at their terminals, scanned weight is how they are coming up with the weight for the BOL.
Charlie98
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It is, but not typically what Midway, for example, would be shipping.
There is a nationwide shortage of drivers now because of federal stimulus money going for unemployment and covid-19 reimbursement. I've read drivers can stay home and make over $47,000. Worse than ammo, driver shortages are driving up gas and food prices because it's not getting delivered on time. The federal money supplements end in September.
As of today the ups tracking site shows label created and ups don’t have the package. Midway says the the package has shipped. And be sure my card has been charged. I guess I will just have to wait and see if I get my primers at some future date.
GeoDudeFlorida
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Don't feel too bad, I have four packages from two sites with the same notice and they've been that way since Monday. None of them are for hazmat - two of those orders are for home office supplies.
CapnMac
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A bunch of the Amazon drivers are not CDL, since they only need to navigate a Transit or Sprinter van.
CDL process is all out of whack nationwide.
Which has complicated life for us in the gun community.
IMAhobbyist
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If we are talking about UPS (small parcel) then yes a shipper's manifest is created daily with information including hazmat shipment which is most often electronically transmitted by shipper to UPS. The driver should posses coupon in cab containing this info for each hazardous package as required by law.
UPS (small parcel) neither has terminals nor utilize a BOL (Bill of Lading), I would expect UPS Freight to have both of those, but they are no longer owned by UPS and seriously need to change their name to something like used to be UPS Freight but now owned by a Canadian to avoid confusion, heck they could even change it back to Overnite as there still seem to be some of those trailers around.
Back to what I chuckled at, if you were to ask anyone associated with UPS what a loaded vehicle weighted, at best you'd get a wild guess or response of "You're not serious with that question are you".
GeoDudeFlorida
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I wasn't aware of that but it explains a lot. When we went down to Tampa a few weeks back we saw fleets of Enterprise rentals Transit Vans on I-75. They were blocking all three lanes and the drivers looked like genuine slackers - texting, talking on phones, weaving in their lanes... NOT what I would call "professionals," with make-shift "Amazon Smile" placards in the back windows and on the doors. I figured they were temp workers taking care of holiday returns or something for a sub-contractor. Around here the Amazon drivers leave our packages by the hiway post boxes or with the folks who live along the roadway. They won't come down clay bed roads.
Charlie98
Member
I've hauled my share of LTL freight, we always had a BOL, even if it listed everything as FAK.
I wasn't aware UPS Freight was not run by UPS... interesting. And it explains a lot. I remember when Overnight's trailers used to say 'Over Indiana, Overnight...' but that was a while ago.
Your chuckle sounds a lot like the old Greyhound busses... which hauled mail and freight, too. I can't imagine what some of those would have scaled out at!
CapnMac
Member
I have heard, but cannot confirm, that all the people in the branded vans are contractors and not direct Amazon employees. All of the shippers add delivery people under contract for holiday increases.
My great-uncle who drove a truck for better than thirty years used to opine that a CDL was easier to lose than to get, and that made for better truck drivers. He retired in the 80s, so that opinion is more than some out of date.
ICC & DoT has always been a hard case about following the rules. And that's not exactly a common virtue anymore.
buddyd157
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being a former CDL driver myself, if the trailers are full to a certain weight or volume of hazmat, then the CDL trailer driver MUST have the hazmat endorsement. UPS, makes sure of that, when one get's hired, i know, i had applied there, long before i had retired.
the "city" drivers that drive the "brownies" do not necessarily need to have the hazmat endorsement, as the weight of the brownie trucks are well under CDL rules, and most times there isn't all that much hazmat to be delivered on the trucks.
it is highly possible that this covid crap is still setting back all employers, as such that many employee's may not be back to work.
doubleh
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Or southeastern New Mexico. There is zero, zilch, nada except a little powder for 50 BMG available.
IMAhobbyist
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If I understood you correctly you are stating UPS (small parcel) semi drivers are required to have Hazmat endorsement on their CDL? If that's the case, I can say with some certainty that statement would not be correct based on my three plus decades with UPS.
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