Shipping Stories -- Tales of Mid-February

[Ian Curtis]

[NOTE: I'm pretty sure I've got this in the right place, but if a mod thinks it deserves to be in Chit-Chat, I've got no qualms]

So, every year in the middle of February the FedEx man comes to pick up a big wooden crate filled with six weeks of hard work, sweat, and tears. It is very important to you the team that this wooden crate gets picked up by a certain time, because who wants to miss out on the action at the Regional? In my 6 years of crating robots, lots of interesting things happened, and I'm sure they've happened to others too. I'm not interested in bashing FIRST or FedEx (imagine where we'd be without these people!), but I am interested in funny, heartwarming, or otherwise entertaining stories.

P.S. I did search for this and nothing came up, but my CD-Search-Fu may be lacking.

This thread was triggered by this quote:

Originally Posted by Chuck Glick

321 didn't get picked up today because the front desk of the high school wouldn't let him in! We had told the school that FedEx was coming for pickup today several times but apparently someone didn't get the message.

Thank goodness the FedEx driver was nice enough to come back and get it for us!

On my side, in 2006 the FedEx driver was on a tight time schedule, showed up 2 hours early and informed us he would be leaving in 10 minutes. We were in the middle of driver's practice. We managed to carry our robot down a flight of stairs, grab our screw guns and strapping tools, cross a warehouse, crate the robot and get the crate back across a warehouse in under 10 minutes. In those frantic moments, we acted as a cohesive team and the adrenaline was intense. (And the FedEx guy was very happy that he got to drive away on time!)

Another time we offered the FedEx guy cake as we rolled the crate from our practice field to the loading dock. He was also a happy camper.

[NOV8R]

In 2006 on ship day one of our faculty came up with a way to give us a few more hours to be able to work on our robot. Since the storage warehouse was only about 20 miles away, he offered to drive the crated robot down using the school's stake bead truck. So just before the last minute we put the crated robot in the truck. In all the haste there was only one problem. No one bothered to tie it down. What are the chances of a nearly 300 plus pound robot/crate sliding out the back of a truck? You guessed it, at 70 mph on a freeway headed to the warehouse it came out and rolled numerous times in the median. Luckily no other vehicles were following very close and what was left of the robot came to rest in the median. On the Thursday morning of the competition the shrink wrapped remains were waiting for us in our pit area. Other teams seeing what was left started wagering wether we would be able to rebuild it in one day. The next morning a battered but functional robot made the field. It took six weeks to build it and only one day to rebuild it.

[Klynn]

Originally Posted by NOV8R

Other teams seeing what was left started wagering wether we would be able to rebuild it in one day. The next morning a battered but functional robot made the field. It took six weeks to build it and only one day to rebuild it.

wow...we havent had that problem...we had programing and driving issues....This years game was hard to work with...

Kudo's for getting it working and fixed again. we would have just given up... [ deleted ]

[Thing2_1723]

We bagged-and-tagged for our first regional this year, but when it was time to ship our robot to Dallas we couldn't remember how to open the crate we had for lunacy. It took 15 people, a hacksaw, 7 screwdrivers, 2 drills, and 2 hammers (a claw and a ball-peen). One advisers was there that day and laughed the entire hour it took for us to get it open.

[FRC4ME]

As I recall, the night before ship we were at the lab at 10:00 or 11:00 PM and needed to put the robot in the crate for shipping to Richmond. Unfortunately the only students who had stayed that late were programmers. So we set them off with the task of securing the robot to the inside of the create

Thirty minutes later, wondering what was taking so long, we decided to check on their progress. They had suspended the robot from the ceiling of the crate with U-bolts and tie-down straps. We reminded them that we needed the robot tied down, not up.

Eventually, the whole process took about an hour, near the end of which one of the mentors exclaimed: "we could have driven it there by now!" Which was funny because it was true.

[Barngirl425]

Hmm we learned a week before ship that our crate had been thrown out. So we spent a day outside in 10 degrees building a new crate

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by Barngirl425

Hmm we learned a week before ship that our crate had been thrown out. So we spent a day outside in 10 degrees building a new crate

Maybe its jusy my school but, how could you not know your crate was thrown out, ours is the biggest peice of @#$% in out shop.

[Barngirl425]

Originally Posted by dag0620

Maybe its jusy my school but, how could you not know your crate was thrown out, ours is the biggest peice of @#$% in out shop.

haha I dont know all I know is when I went to go see if we could get it brough up from the barn (we are n a 72 acre campus) maintenance told me that they had thrown in out lol