Strange and Unusual Things We Ship by Truck

While driving to work this morning, I passed a truck trans­port­ing live chickens. This may not seem unusual, but when you think about it – shipping live chickens is probably not what most people think of as a typical trucking shipment. I wondered, what else is shipped by truck that might be con­sid­ered unusual?

Animals (other than chickens)

If you can name an animal, it’s been shipped on a truck. Pandas, penguins, and poisonous reptiles have all been shipped. 70,000 sea turtle eggs were rescued and shipped by air and truck to Florida’s Atlantic Coast to protect them from the last northern gulf oil spill. Frogs, killer bees, alli­ga­tors, and rhinos have all been moved by truck. A whale shark was loaded into a special container, put on a plane, and delivered by truck from Taiwan to Atlanta – over 8000 miles!

Fragile Freight

TKO Signs recently shipped a 25-foot sign, which we designed and man­u­fac­tured for an inter­na­tional company, from Plain­field, IN to Puerto Rico. Special con­sid­er­a­tions had to be made to protect this sign during shipping. In a post titled, Delicate and Unusual Freight, Tucker Worldwide Shipping stated:

“Shipping artwork, signs, antennas, awnings and other fragile freight must be handled dif­fer­ently. The various sizes, shapes and the fragile nature of these varied items make shipping them chal­leng­ing. Combine those dif­fi­cul­ties with the coor­di­na­tion of occa­sional delivery to a job site, and you can see why the shipping of signs, artwork, delicate machinery, etc., is as much of an art form as designing these items is.”

Fright­en­ing freight

Hazmat materials, ammu­ni­tion, and flammable products are routinely shipped by freight. As cautious as shipping companies are, and despite DOT reg­u­la­tions and the training required of drivers, accidents and mechan­i­cal failures will happen. It is the respon­si­bil­ity of every driver who shares the road with truckers to be aware and cautious.

Whether it’s part of the hull of the Titanic, the liberty bell, or millions of daffodils, we assume the trucking industry can ship it. Regard­less how unusual or strange the mer­chan­dise – we expect and depend on the trucking industry to ship it. We all should appre­ci­ate the research, practice, and efforts the industry invests to deliver our parcels safely, undamaged, and on time, no matter how chal­leng­ing our shipment may be.