Bob Noel wrote:
In article . com,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

But, still, it's ridiculous. I mean, how in hell do you back a semi
into a BUILDING?

Well, he probably had to swerve several times...

Years ago an acquaintance was studying to become a mechanical engineer
and needed a thesis topic. He decided to look into why the standard
design for a loading dock was something like "do the design, compute all
the loads for the largest shipments, the weight of forklifts, etc AND
THEN MULTIPLY ALL THE SUPPORT SIZES BY 4." This was uniformly accepted
as safe practice.

It was true. Anything less would crumble within a short time. The
answer was that trucks would back into the docks.