Heavy

For all you aspiring freight dogs, there is one little item that I havent heard much commenting about; The Loaders......
Loaders are not pilots, they dont understand such things as "center of gravity" and "maximum gross weight". They are of the "stuff it and go" mentality and they figure that if it fits, its good to go.
I had the Safford/FtHuachuca/Skyharbor run previously, and had a terrible time with the loaders in Ft Huachuca. I will say this because they are notorious and this is no new news to anyone.They would overload the plane and lie about the total weight.I got wise to this really quick and began to have issues with them. I called them the seven dwarves because 5 would stand around telling stupid jokes while 2 would actually work.Took them on average 40 minutes to load my plane which drove me nuts. I would stand there tapping my watch saying "come on boys,its GO time " They would moan and groan and try to distract me as I at this point was making them weigh each package as I could not trust them.
About 6 weeks ago I was doing my usual strict surveillance when my phone rang. It was BLB a good friend and my former chief pilot who was in Airbus school.
I was so happy to hear from him that I turned away from the loaders and had a brief conversation. Afterwards, I noticed the loaders trying to stuff a large trunk in the aft portion of the tail section ( no cargo is allowed there ) and I made them take it out ( it weighed 250 ilbs ) I asked them of the total weight "1850 ilbs" they sweetly replied. Hmmmmmm, could barely close the cargo door....
Wind blowing 35 gust 42 out of the southwest, runway 26, 11,000 foot runway.
Launch
On the go, 3/4 of the way down I almost aborted the takeoff, (should have) .....
staggered off the ground with 200 ft per minute climb. Tossed around by the wind flowing over the mountains in front of me, I held runway heading to try and get some altitude. I was mentally killing off the 7 dwarves all the while, getting griped at by approach control for not climbing steep enough to avoid terrain, not to mention my fuel flow was very high due to the fact that I couldnt get to altitude soon enough.....
Continued on Finally got to altitude,but I was concious of my fuel being lower than normal.....
Back to Sky Harbor and the evening dance begins, who gets in first behind the heavys.Fuel is looking low and Im getting nervous, Approach is vectoring me hither and yon, and the fuel annuciatiors start going off...$%*!. 2 yellow ones I can live with temporarily...Still no base leg vector from ATC. Then the RED one goes off. OK now its time to pull the fuel card on ATC and I announce "(call sign) minimum fuel".. amazing how that gets their attention. They brought me in with no delay, my favorite runway to boot.And I was able to shut down well within legal limitations.

Anyhow, I had the ground crew at Sky Harbor weigh freight, and it was WAY off what the seven dwarves had said....
That was the last time I did that run, but from what I hear, the seven dwarves are still up to their old tricks...................