When I was living in Hawaii I use to fly night cargo that included taking USPS mail and packages to and from Honolulu to all the other islands. I was flying twin turboprops - too small for roll-on / roll-off containerized cargo like they have on the bigger jets. So all the mail was in "flats", small packages were in "sacks" and the larger packages were loose and everything was floor loaded.
When I taxiied into the transload ramp at Honolulu I was met by a group of min-wage cargo handler guys driving a tug with a couple of container trailers in tow. They would park the container trailers as close to the cargo door on the plane as they could, but it would still be about 10-15' away from the door (they couldn't get it any closer due to the wing and tail). They would open the cargo door and start "unloading" - by that I mean literally throwing the sacks and packages the 10-15' from the aircrafts door to the container trailer! You would hear things crunching and breaking all of the time! :wack:
Talked to the cargo handlers supervisor a couple of times about and all he had to say was that they were under a tight time constraint to get the mail into the Honolulu USPS sort facillity before a certain time - if they were late, USPS would slap 'em with a late fee and fine. Then with a cheesy grin he would ad ... "besides, thats what they have package insurance for - hope they got some!" :banghead:
