So we were wrapping up our first peak season – we called it Christmas season at the time because we weren’t yet pros – I think it was the evening of 12/23/01. Despair, Inc’s 2002 calendar was the main product for that season, and we were receiving a delivery of the second or third printing of the calendar to supply all of the post-Christmas orders that would come in. The trouble was the delivery truck didn’t have a lift gate and Gibson didn’t have a dock.

“YO – I KNOW WHAT WE NEED TO DO.” I mean, who wants to unload a pallet case by case off a truck when you’ve got a Pallet Stacker? Because we all know, the Pallet Stacker is just going to lower that sweet, heavy pallet to the ground, just like it does when you try to lift a too-heavy pallet with the foot pedal pumping. In my defense, no one objected to my great idea.

We pallet jacked the pallet of calendars to the edge of the truck, rolled that Pallet Stacker up, jacked it into position, and slid it in snug to the pallet. “OK. Yo. Check it. I’m going to pump this pedal real good, and you guys push the pallet off the truck.” Brilliant.

I pumped the pedal. Got some air. They pushed. Pallet Stacker moved. Pallet was in the air. Pallet tipped over. Pallet was on the ground. not having lowered.

It turns out there’s hydraulic capacity and that’s different than the capacity of the pallet stacker forks. And a pallet of 2002 Despair.com calendars exceeded the capacity of the Pallet stacker forks – the right fork to be precise – and it just bent way out of shape and failed to hold up its end of the bargain.

It was a pretty clean dive, as they go. We were able to salvage most of the cases of the calendars. But the Pallet Stacker fork needed some serious welds to get back into operation.