Forklift drivers are awesome! I ran and owned businesses for years where loading and unloading trucks was a critical part of the job.

The man who eventually became my business partner was an artist on a hi-lo. That man can thread a needle with a set of forks, I swear, and I respect him enormously for it because I know how difficult it is.

Often, what we had to load and unload were bales of compressed scrap plastic weighing about 1,500 lbs each. Because of razors-thin margins and all, we had to have each truck loaded with at least 40 bales. And if it was a shipping container, which are a little bit tighter than lorries, we still had to get 40 bales on the damn thing.

Naturally, our skilled forklift operators were treasures. We valued them highly, because if not for them them, my partner would have to leave his family in the evening and go handle a difficult load himself. Sometimes he did, because he was a better forklift operator than anybody we hired.

The people in this world who really accomplish things are the people who build and ship, who do real things for real people.

It’s a shame we don’t value that more. Nobody should ever feel a need to apologize for working in a warehouse. The rest of us owe you a great deal.