12 Containers in One Day – Shipping Team Worked Until 10 PM

Tuesday, April 22 – The shipping area at Ouyijia factory was busier than usual.

Before 7 am, Wang, the shipping team leader, was already there. He walked around the yard, looking at the pallets stacked the night before. He had a rough count in his head: 12 containers today, going to five countries – Vietnam, the Philippines, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The products were the usual ones: structural adhesive, foam sealant and no‑nail adhesive.

“These containers were ready last week, just waiting to be loaded today,” Wang said as he started his forklift. The engine sounded especially loud in the early morning quiet.

At 7:30, the first container truck backed into the loading bay. Three forklift operators took their positions – three loading bays running at the same time. Foam sealant cartons are lighter and can be stacked a bit higher; structural adhesive cartons are heavy and need to go on the bottom, with nothing too heavy on top. Wang walked around, keeping an eye on things, occasionally calling out: “Turn that one around, label facing out.”

Manager Chen from the shipping department had a stack of shipping orders an inch thick. She was responsible for checking the product name, quantity and destination for each container. Every time a container was finished, she took a photo of the sealed door and ticked it off in her notebook. “Export orders have picked up noticeably in the last two weeks,” she said, flipping through the papers. “Some are trial orders from new customers at the Canton Fair – one small container at a time. Others are repeat orders from regular customers – sometimes two containers at once.”

By noon, only four containers had been loaded. The canteen sent meals to the shipping area. The forklift operators took turns eating – ten minutes each, then back to work. Wang ate last, quickly finishing a bowl of rice, drank some water and got up again.

The afternoon was more hectic. One batch of foam sealant was going to Dubai, and the customer wanted Arabic labels on each can. The labels had been printed in advance, but applying them was slow work – each label had to be aligned, and any crooked one had to be peeled off and redone. Workshop manager Zhao supervised the line personally. “This order is for a major local distributor – our first cooperation. No mistakes allowed.”

“Are the labels straight? Is the production date printed on the bottom?” Zhao checked every can one by one. It was past 4 pm by the time this batch was fully labelled, packed and palletised.

At 7 pm, three containers still had not been loaded. The floodlights in the shipping area were all on, and the forklifts’ tail lights flickered between the stacks of goods. Wang glanced at his watch and called a truck driver who was still on his way. “Where are you now? Still 20 km away? OK, drive carefully – we’ll wait for you.”

At 9:10 pm, the last container truck pulled into the factory gate. The loaders had already sorted the final pallets, and the forklift finished one container in three minutes. Wang stood at the rear of the truck, watched the doors close and lock, took a photo for his records.

At 9:30 pm, the container truck slowly drove out of the factory gate with its hazard lights flashing. The lights in the shipping area went off one by one, and the forklifts were parked back in their places.

Wang wrote the last few lines in the shipping log: April 22 – 12 containers – total 312 tons. He closed the notebook and dusted off its cover.

Manager Chen asked him if he was tired. He said, “It’s tiring, but when I see the goods leave, I feel at ease.”