It may be the locations you are going to, I have only picked up at 2 locations, and only about a dozen items heavy enough to need a fork lift, ranging from about 350 - 5,500 pounds. Of these pickups I have experienced:
The above mentioned, up ending of a diesel powered compressor
Only other pickup at that same location almost a year later had the same fork lift driver (he had improved), but still had enough trouble loading a 30KW skid mounted generator onto a trailer that I was tempted to say move over and let me do it, as it took him about 3 minutes to do something that should take 15-20 seconds.
I picked up a 300 pound large computer color laser printer, fork lift driver did a good careful job, had me move the truck to a level spot and warned me the brakes did not work on the lift.
125kw generator pick up took 3 GL people and 2 forklifts nearly half an hour to manage to load it onto a flatbed trailer.
Most recently had a pick up on a cold (well cold for the south) January morning, took the GL people half an hour to get one of their big diesel fork lifts to start, and then it did not want to build up enough hydraulic pressure to lift the 4,200 pound piece of equipment onto the trailer for another half hour or longer (this was at least a 20,000 pound rated fork lift, probably much more)
there were probably other lesser examples that don't come to mind at the moment, overall it seems a mix of poor equipment condition and poor operator training.
Ike
