When Shipping the Big Iron...?

MHQ13 asks: "We recently arranged with Sun for them to loan us one of their larger systems. The system is a Sun Fire 4800. Not a cheap machine. The system is mounted within its own 72" tall cabinet. It is shipped in a wood crate which is approximately 3' wide by 4' deep by 8' fall. Gross weight is about 900 pounds. Since their warehouse is just across the San Francisco Bay from us they contracted with a local carrier to ship it to us. The machine was picked up from their warehouse, placed into the truck and arrived at our receiving department a few hours later." And thus, the story begins. Read on for the conclusion of MHQ's Big Iron Shipping story and if you would, please share any anecdotes about mishaps that occured to expensive hardware that you or your company may have purchased.

"When the driver and our receiving personnel opened the trailer door the crate was lying on its side, it was upright when it left the warehouse. The drive stated that he had hear a loud bang after making a turn and had thought he may have blown a tire.

On the crate there were several shock sensors and tilt sensors only one of which had tripped (the one which was face up when it was on its side). There were also instructions telling us what to do if these sensors had been tripped.

The instructions told us to accept shipment but to inspect for damage and call the carrier if we found any. We did accept shipment but did not open the crate to inspect for damage. We made a note of the situation on the bill of lading with the driver present then contacted our respresentative at Sun for advice.

Our representative is having a replacement shipped to us and the unit which is here now will be picked up and sent back.

I was quite surprised that the crate was not strapped in and tied down tight given how narrow, tall, and heavy this crate was, not to mention the value of its contents.

My question of the Slashdot Community is: What other Big Iron shipping nightmare stories have you got?"

Comments

Telex tape drive...

[Pig Hogger]

Some 20 years ago, in a previous life, the Big Iron department ordered several Telex tape drives for the company's Big Blue.

When the crate arrived, the driver was so adamant to have the bill of lading signed that we decided to take our time to inspect the crate. We didn't have to inspect for a long time to find a very obvious "little" defect: they simply drove a fork-lift prong through the logic boards...

Needless to say, the driver wasn't very happy not to have our autographs... It was such a masterful job that we oughta asked him for his!!!

Re:Telex tape drive...

[MaggieL]

*More* than twenty years ago,I was present as a local savings bank had a new IBM 3211 "high-speed" impact printer deleivered for their brand new System/370 Model 145 mainframe.

This beast had to be 10 feet long, four feet deep and another four feet tall, and weighed at *least* a thousand pounds, so much that it was intended to be shipped on it's own built-in casters, then jacked up on pedestal feet, with the caster wheel stored inside against the day when the machine would have to be moved again, probably on it's way to the scrap heap.

The printer moved though shipment, onto the bank's loading dock and into the frieght elevator without incident.

Unfortunatly care was *not* observed that the floor of the freight elevator be close to even with the floor of the 10th floor, when three or four longshoreman-types applied all their muscle to get the thing moving out of the freight elevator car.

When the two caster wheels on the leading end of the printer met the edge of the building floor, they stopped cold. The printer, having much energy stored in it's mass, did not.

The wheels sheared right off, and the printer slid partway out onto the floor, leaving it halfway in and out of the door of the freight elevator, with no wheels underneith it.

Ther it stayed until the next day a plan was hatched: the elevator was placed under manual control and lifted about six inches, the printer was shoved as far as possible back into the car, the car was raised up about a foot above floor level, and an office furniture dolly was places onunder the now wheelless end, the elevator car lowered again to be *exactly* level with (or slightly above) the delivery floor level before attempting to wheel the behemoth offf to the "glass house" wheich was to be it's home.

VAX

[JanneM]

I worked summer at a company, programming a PDP11. In addition to the PDP, there were a number of VAXen used for various tasks. We had ordered a new machine from Digital - a complete stýstem with disks, documentation and all. It came on two fully loaded pallets; unfortunately, the shippers came to the site fairly late on friday, and someone (still unclear) told them to just dump the pallets outside the building they were going to. Also, nobody saw fit to call anybody about the arrived shipment.

Come monday morning, it had rained hard the entire shipment was soaked. The plastic wrapping around the boxes weren't tight enough to keep the water out - the manuals were so soggy they could have been wrung through. In the end we didn't accept the shipment, and returned the pallets, and got a replacement from Digital.

Contrast this when, once, we ordered a serial cable. The cable came in a three-foot by three foot shrinkwrapped and taped box, filled almost completely filled with that shock absorbing stuff - and a coiled cable (in its own sealed bag), rattling aroung in a corner of the box.

/Janne

Cali to Texas Full Service

[Vrallis]

We had a similar shipment a while back, though not quite as bad. It was also a full rack cabinet, filled with HP servers. Note, this was through a third party, not HP direct. More on HP later.

It was supposed to be shipped from California to Texas by a specialized carrier. This guys have trucks with some serious shock absorbtion, and the insurance to deal with quarter-million dollar equipment. It was full-service, too. Our computer room was up the loading dock, through a couple departments and low doorways, and up a ramp (raised flooring) through another low doorway. They were supposed to use the mechanized tilting/lifting pallet jacks, get the crate all the way into our computer room, get the rack off the pallet, and roll it into place.

The day before it was scheduled to arrive (at least one good thing), we have a large delivery van (normal crappy suspension) show up at our docks with something addressed to us. We get out there, look at the bill of lading, and sure enough, it's our rack of equipment.

It was just one guy--the driver.

And he doesn't do full service. He only had permission on the bill of lading to drop the package on the docks, and that was it. No mention of full service, and this company didnt' do it anyway.

It turned out it was shipped by air freight instead of truck, then dropped off (via normal van) to a local shipping company, with instructions for them to drop it off to us.

What a load of shit.

We finally ended up with a couple HP reps (only called out to certify our cluster; not move hardware) coming out to help us out. We lucked out that the rack was *just barely* able to fit under our doorways. So, these two HP reps grabbed a bunch of plywood and crap, stripped the crate, got the rack off the crate by quickly rolling it down the plywood (a hair-raising experience), and rolled it to the computer room.

Fortunately, we had a portable ramp built to go up the steps. It took 8 of us to get the rack up the ramp though, but we finally got it into place.

I still have no idea what became of the billing issues with the shipment; no idea if were charged for the full-service shipping, or what.

Re:Tape machine instructions not detailed enough

[foobar104]

The tapes are rather big, and a little sticker on the insertion slot show a yellow triangle, an hand reaching into the slot, and a line through it.

I guess this is a little off-topic, but the topic is lame anyway so who cares?

My all-time favorite warning label can be seen on the inside of Ampex DST 812 tape libraries. (Maybe others in that series, too, but mine was a DST 812.)

These things are pretty big-- about eight feet across and four feet deep, with a pair of large doors on the back for access to the tape robotics.

This is a little tough to describe, but try to picture it. The tape drives are in a stack on the left side of the library (viewed from the front). The middle of the library is tape storage, and the right is power supplies and robotics and stuff. There is a big beam that runs down the center of the library, and the robot arm moves left and right along that beam. The arm itself is a big piece of steel with the manipulator and optics mounted on it.

This library has some serious motors in it. When the robot arm needs to go from the left extreme to the right extreme-- a distance of about six feet, I guess-- it makes the trip in about a tenth of a second. Whoom! So fast the whole 2,500 pound chassis shakes a little from absorbing the momentum of the arm when it stops.

Obviously, you're only supposed to have the access doors open when the power is off. There are lots of circuit switches built into the doors to ensure that the power gets cut if the doors are opened. Nevertheless, there's a warning label.

The label, bright yellow, depicts one of those stick-figure people all labels have. He's leaning forward with his head in the back of the machine. The robot arm is coming at him, and the red lightning bolts coming from the place where the arm meets his black-dot head indicate impact, agony, and grievous injury.

All in all, it's pretty darned explicit for a warning label.