Transportation
Through severe weather conditions, tight time constraints, intense
deadlines, awkward loads, and a new staff, transportation services
managed to get everything from one place to another and back again
in an effective way. Transportation is an extensive process, components
of which are directed by multiple, specialized people to various
locations and for various purposes.
The new Burning Man office featured two containers rather than
a warehouse. Instead of having a Warehouse Manager, we had an on-call
coordinator and driver for the San Francisco-to-Black Rock Station
run. Unfortunately, the change from warehouse and manager to simple
containers for staging—and no dedicated manager—put
stress on the office staff. The overall need for shipping did diminish
due to the many containers on the ranch, which hold last year’s
inventory for each department, as well as the self-reliance of
individuals who used their own resources to get things back and
forth. However, the San Francisco-to-Nevada transportation
process will improve in 2003.
Another aspect of transportation is obtaining materials and supplies
from various locations, coordinated by either the Purchasing Manager
or the Run Coordinator, who operate out of the Gerlach office.
All the heavy machinery and truck after truck of supplies are delivered
to build Black Rock City. Most supply runs are to Reno and back,
and the addition of a fleet of rental trucks improved the productivity
of the process compared to the past practice of relying on a decaying
fleet of ranch trucks. Some failures in the check out and accountability
process put stress on the runners and purchasers, but this problem
will be resolved for 2003.
In 2001, the “load out” to the playa was performed
by a contractor with a shortage of drivers and trucks. This situation
was resolved in 2002 by hiring professional semi-truck drivers
out of Gerlach. The team lead by Bruno’s grandson Willy accomplished
the ranch-to-playa job in record time. The return trip from playa
to ranch was hampered by dust storms, but despite this obstacle,
the professionals accomplished a Herculean task in excellent time.
After prefabrication at Black Rock Station, items like benches
and art pieces, as well as loads of supplies, were transported
to the playa. Containers eased the loading trouble for unruly objects
like the Man and the spires. Entire loads were containerized, forklifted
onto a flatbed, and transported to the playa. On the playa, departments
find their stuff by coordinating with the receivers and DPW dispatch
at the DPW Depot. Many loads were delivered directly where they
were needed on the playa, like the Cauldron and burn platforms
that were delivered then filled with wood daily by two crews. During
exodus and clean-up, supplies, containers, and itty bits of trash
were all transported off of the playa to their appropriate destinations.
Transportation is a fundamental and critical operation provided
by the Department of Public Works. We have a limited amount of
time to set up and take down the city, and the timing for the load
out and back again affects the entire event production process.
We plan to “keep on trucking” our successes through
to 2003, and we will tweak the rental truck and San Francisco-to-Nevada
transportation process.
Submitted by,
Ada Lee Chester
There was no Transportation article for 2001 to link to