Shipping Wars!

I love the History channel.

To be honest, I don’t even know why it’s called the History channel because it doesn’t show too many history programmes, but what it does show, Pawn Stars, American Restoration, American pickers etc are brilliant programmes, with Storage Wars being my favourite.

Storage Wars and Pawn Stars have been very successful, which has led to quite a few copies of the show, Storage Hunter, Storage Wars Texas and Cajun Pawn Stars just to name a few, but none of them come close to being as good as the original, which is why, when I saw the advert for Shipping Wars, I was very sceptical that it was just another average programme cashing in on the success of previous shows.

Despite my initial worries, I decide to check out the show, and I’m so glad I did!

Shipping Wars is brilliant. It follows a similar format to Storage Wars, as in there is the auction then you follow the people on the show to see how much they make or loose, but the subject of the show is different enough to make it a unique show.

They use a bidding site, a bit like eBay, to bid on different objects that need to be delivered, the objects can be anything from a camel to a massive prop from Little Shop of Horrors.

Another factor they have to consider is where is the object going, it may just need delivering to a neighbouring state, or it might have to go halfway across America. All of this they have to bear in mind as they try and put in the lowest bid to win the job, but still make themselves some profit from doing the job.

After the auction is over, the winner has to go and collect whatever has to be delivered, and this is where things can start to go wrong.

In the episode I watched, a guy was trying to load a very heavy cast iron phone box into his truck. He arrived to no help or equipment so he had to build a trolley to be able to get it on the truck, only to be shut down because he didn’t have the correct insurance paper.

Once they have actually managed to get the load on the truck, they then have to do the actual transporting part, which once again to lead to problems.

 One of the problems that came up in the episode is that the guy had run out of fuel, because the load he was carrying was heavier than they were told, which obviously uses up the fuel quicker.

After spotting another truck driver, he agreed to let him take some fuel from the truck to use, but after some equipment malfunctions the guy ended up trying to siphon the fuel by sucking on a pipe, he ended up with so much of it in his mouth it made me feel really sick.

Once they get to the other end, surprise surprise there can be more issues, normally with getting the person to cough up the cash, or sorting out a final price if they have arrived late, or in the case of the fuel man, figuring out how much extra he was owed because of the extra weight of the freight.

It just makes for quite a entertaining and very interesting show. It sounds weird calling a show about deliveries interesting, but you find out so much stuff that you didn’t know, and of course all the drama of things going wrong adds to the appeal, not to mention the competition between the drivers to get the lowest bid whilst still being able to make money off it.

I’m looking forward to the next episode, which will be on the History Channel, Monday at 9pm.