Hand Bomb

Posted by ESC on June 08, 2005

In Reply to: Hand Bomb posted by Brad Fallon on June 08, 2005

: I saw this was asked once before but I am not sure of the answer. In the transportation business, when something is stacked or loaded by hand, it is called "hand bomb". For example, "that 40' ocean container from Shanghai was hand bombed." It would mean that the cartons were not loaded onto a skid, and each individual carton would have to be offloaded by hand. Some people use the term "Hand Bomb", while others use "Hand Balm". Thinking about it though, I should think the best spelling would be "Hand Bond", as the cartons are being loaded securely, and thus "bonded" by hand. I am not sure of the origin of this term, but it is very frequently heard in the North American transporation business, as well as warehouses and distribution centres.

I googled and found:

Hand Bomb
In the trucking industry when a worker has to unload a vehicle without the help of a forklift or a palate jack. They have to hand bomb the load.

Western Region News. The newsletter of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.
www.cep.ca/reg_western/files/newsletter/wr050101.pdf