The Cape center was the first venture away from Fort Wayne and I must say we had a lot of fun during the opening and operations of the center.
All centers have carts used in the order filling process. The bin sections have carts that are pushed by one person through narrow aisles. Totes and or cartons are placed on these carts, the order filler places merchandise into the totes or cartons and the cart is used to move merchandise from the filling location to either a conveyor or a shipping cart. The conveyor or shipping cart is then used to move the orders to shipping.
The other order filling sections with larger merchandise, use a large cart that weighs about 400 pounds empty. In most centers these carts are known as, “shipping carts”. When the order is complete the product is left on the cart and it is taken to shipping.
The above explanation was an effort to get to this story.
In the olden days at the Cape center, (when I say olden days I mean in the early 70s) the order fillers pushed and pulled the shipping carts by hand.
We had an order filler in the bulk and lumber area whose name was Ralph. Ralph worked alone in this area and had a unique way of filling orders. Ralph would place one knee on the cart and push with the other foot. In other words he was riding the cart from one order filling location to another.
Over the years these shipping carts at Cape became known as, “Ralph Carts”. I believe the Cape center was the only center that had a nick name for these carts.
Another cart story from the early Cape center.
Cape had trash carts that when filled could be placed on the tow line and set to divert off at the trash dumpster. The trash compactor was located in the back corner of receiving and it was my responsibility to see that the trash was dumped. Most of us did not like the job of dumping the trash even though it was not hard work, as the unit would lift the trash cart, dump the trash into the compactor and the compactor would crush anything that was dumped in.
Personally I viewed this work as being beneath me. I wasn’t a garbage man. I had real problems with dumping the trash and I did not like to assign the work to anyone else.
For some reason I decided to dump the trash every day. I don’t remember what caused me to do this but after about a week of dumping the trash I decided it wasn’t a bad job, I didn’t mind doing the work myself, and I no longer minded assigning someone else to do the job.
That was a long way of getting to this story.
Dawson Young was a stock person in one of the order filling areas. His section was centrally located and close to shipping. Others would take his trash cart and then when he needed it, he could not find it. First he painted the section number on the cart thinking that others would leave it alone. That did not help.
Dawson in an effort to stop others from taking his trash cart, had chained it to a rack. Now he did not chain it so it could not be moved at all, instead he put a 25 foot chain on the cart.
As luck would have it, the warehouse manager needed a trash cart and decided to take Dawson’s cart. He took hold of the handle and began to walk away pulling the cart. When the cart reached the end of the chain it stopped abruptly. The manager later described it as, “almost pulling his arm out of socket”.
Since we are talking about the manager;
This manager’s name was Jim Murphy (I said this manager as there were at least 6 managers that I remember at Cape). Jim would walk or ride through the warehouse checking on the work being done.
The manager and supervisor had three wheeled battery powered scooters to ride. The scooter was ridden standing and had just enough room for their feet.
This particular time, Jim was walking through the overstock rack next to the bin section, I was walking with him. We were discussing something when Jim fell face down on the cement floor. He didn’t have time to catch himself or at least he didn’t seem to make an effort. Jim had stepped one foot into a plastic band that someone had removed from a carton and dropped on the floor, when the other foot got tangled in the band he fell. The only thing hurt was his pride.
Don Ford
More stories later.
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