Candy Adams, CTSM, CME, CEM, CMP, CMM, "The Booth Mom," is an independent exhibit-management consultant, trainer, speaker, writer, and an Exhibitor conference faculty member. CandyAdams @BoothMom.com

o trade show disaster makes me feel quite as helpless as getting to the exhibit hall, hunting down my booth space, and finding . nothing. There's no experience quite like sitting alone in your empty square of concrete with little more than your booth number taped to the floor, and the freight you meticulously packed and shipped the week before nowhere to be seen.

The good news is that freight is rarely permanently lost; it usually turns up sooner or later. (And for your sake, let's hope it's sooner rather than later.) So here is a 10-step plan to help you track down your freight, whether it's hiding out somewhere on the show floor or stuck in a broken-down truck on the side of the road.

Step 1: Scout your perimeter.

After you've scoured your booth space, search the aisles on all sides. If you are on a no-freight aisle (a freeway for the material-handling fork trucks), your freight may have been placed in an adjacent aisle to keep the no-freight aisle clear. Also check in adjacent booth spaces, as installation-and-dismantle labor and carpet layers sometimes move freight into any available space to be able to perform their jobs.

Step 2: Check your documentation.

Review your shipping order to confirm the time your freight was supposed to arrive at the advance warehouse or the show site. Check all of the shipping orders you or your exhibit house submitted to carriers, the confirmations you received for the date and time of delivery, the carrier's exact name, contact phone numbers, and the tracking number of the shipment(s).

If your trade show packages were shipped by what's known as a small-package carrier, such as FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc., your property may be on site, but small-package carrier shipments usually take longer to show up in your booth space than freight shipped by a common carrier or van line. This delay typically occurs because shipments from small-package carriers go through a specially designated dock at show site and not the marshaling yard (a remote parking lot where the trucks congregate and wait to be assigned a dock to unload). A teamster then has to write up an inbound material-handling form for each exhibitor, including the exhibitor's name and booth number, and the weight and number of packages. These packages are delivered to the correct booths on the show floor, which may take as much as a day after their arrival at the dock.

Step 3: Check with the service desk.

With all of your shipping paperwork in hand, head to the General Services Contractor's (GSC) service desk, usually in a back corner of the hall below a ceiling-hung banner with the GSC's name on it. The service-desk personnel can check their computer system to see if they have documented the arrival of any shipments for your booth space, how many pieces they received by which carrier, and exactly what time they arrived. If the freight arrived more than a day before, they might have the hard copies of your inbound material-handling forms and the matching certified weight slips in your billing file.

If the service desk doesn't have any records of your freight's arrival, ask reps if they can call the marshaling yard (if it was a direct-to-site delivery) or check again in their records of advance-warehouse deliveries to verify that all warehouse freight has already been delivered to the show floor.

Step 4: Talk to the freight foreman.

If the service-desk personnel don't have a record of your freight's arrival, have them radio their freight foreman, who has the truck drivers' check-in sheets. He or she can verify if your driver has signed in at the marshaling yard or is sitting at the dock waiting to unload your freight. You can also ask the freight foreman if there are any delays in unloading freight at the show site or moving freight from the advance warehouse.

Check if the GSC's records would show an "aborted check-in" if your driver arrived without a certified weight slip. The driver may have been sent away by the GSC to get a weight slip, which might have shuffled him or her to the end of the move-in line.

If your truck is already on site, ask the freight foreman to estimate when the truck might get unloaded. This information can help you anticipate the pick-up time of your I&D labor if you're using will-call labor or have a flexible start time with your exhibitor-appointed contractor (EAC).

Step 5: Talk to your carrier.

If your truck has not yet checked in at the marshaling yard or dock, it's time to call your carrier or, ideally, your specific shipping agent. If you don't work with a specific agent, your carrier should have given you a number for its dispatch department, which keeps track of the location of its trucks and drivers. Be prepared to give the dispatcher your tracking number(s) so he or she can easily find your load in the computer system.

If your shipment is still in transit, ask your carrier to pinpoint the location of your driver, how far (in time and mileage) he or she is from the convention delivery site, and when the driver estimates he or she will arrive. Also ask the dispatcher if the driver can be reached by cell phone, and request this number so you can stay in touch.

It never hurts to verify that your carrier is at the right marshaling yard. A carrier recently told me that my truck driver had been in a marshaling yard for hours, but no one had called him up to a dock. It turned out that he was in the marshaling yard of another show at a different convention center.

If there has been an unanticipated problem that will eat up a significant amount of time, such as misrouting, an accident, or weather delay, ask what your carrier will do to remedy the problem. Can it air freight your shipment or assign two drivers to the truck so they can drive through without taking breaks? Now's the time to brainstorm, not panic and yell.

Record all of the information you learn from your agent or dispatch about the cause of the late arrival, including what you were told and by whom. This information can be useful to document problems for a claim against the carrier, which should reimburse you for overtime charges on material handling and I&D and for other penalties caused by its mistake.

Step 6: Ask for the proof of delivery.

If your carrier says your shipment has already been delivered, ask for the proof of delivery (POD), which includes the name of the person who signed for your shipment and the time when he or she signed for it. Also verify the number of pieces that were delivered. This will help the service desk track your shipment on the show floor. Your carrier may even need to fax the POD to the service desk if the GSC does not recognize the name of the person who signed for the freight.

Ask the service-desk representative to put you in touch with the freight foreman on the docks, and explain who signed for the shipment and when. Offer to meet either the freight foreman for the dock nearest your booth space or arrange to meet the person who signed for your freight at a specified location to see if he or she remembers where it was placed on the show floor. Follow up on all leads.

Step 7: Check the orphanage.

Another possibility is that your labels fell off in transit. Ask the freight foreman where freight with missing labels ends up, which is generally near the freight door where they were delivered.

Depending on the amount of orphaned freight, there may also be a separate area for the whole show. I call this area "crate purgatory." Search these areas for your missing freight.

Step 8: Call a search party.

What you really need now is more eyes. Show management often hires one or more floor managers to assist exhibitors during setup and teardown. They're usually the ones riding motorized carts or bicycles. Ask your floor manager to alert all the other floor managers via radio to be on the lookout for whatever you're missing - crates, cartons, cases, carpet, pallets, or blanket-wrapped pieces. And let them know if there are any special identifying marks to look for such as special colors of labels, crates, cases, or stretch wrap.

Enlist fork-truck drivers to keep their eyes peeled as well. Also ask the fork-truck drivers in your area of the show floor if there are freight delays at the docks. You can often find out more information from the rank-and-file workers than you'll get from the GSC's managers who don't want to admit to delivery delays on the dock.

Finally, start your own aisle-by-aisle search of the show floor. Be methodical and don't leave any stone unturned. Look in alcoves, hallways, entrances, doorways, and behind other freight. Pay special attention to the number of the booth space at the last show to which your exhibit properties were shipped, in case an old label wasn't removed and your freight was accidentally delivered to the wrong booth space. Also look in booth spaces with numbers that could be transposed, such as 343 to 434, or misread, such as 181 vs. 1181 or 1811.

Also, if your company has more than one booth space at the show, or if your booth number changed due to a last-minute space relocation, material-handling personnel using outdated lists of booth numbers could have delivered your freight to the wrong space. Check your old and new booth spaces, just in case.

Step 9: Formulate a plan B.

While you're waiting to find out what's happened to your freight, make a plan for what you will do if it does not arrive in time to set up before the show opens. How can you improvise with what you do have? What will it take to replace what you're missing? Can you rent an exhibit from the GSC or a local exhibit house? Did you bring digital files of your graphics on a CD or USB drive? Is there another exhibit that could be air-freighted from your usual exhibit house with back-up graphics? Do you have a local distributor or salesperson with exhibit properties or equipment you can borrow for the show?

The first time your freight goes MIA, you're likely to run around like a chicken with your head cut off. But if you remain calm, you're more likely to effectively implement the aforementioned steps and craft a contingency plan that will keep you on track for success at the show.

Step 10: Learn from your mistakes.

Missing freight is almost an inevitable rite of passage. No matter how prepared (or lucky) you are, you're still likely to encounter a missing-freight disaster at some point. If, or more accurately when, it happens, learn what you can from the experience to help you avoid or handle any additional freight-related disasters.

While many of the factors that can cause missing freight are out of your control, the following tips can help you avoid an encore performance of your shipment's disappearing act.

 Proof your shipping-order confirmations from your carrier when you receive them and verify all critical information such as the targeted delivery date and time. Catching an error can be the difference between getting your freight on time and sitting in your booth space empty handed.

 Test the after-hours phone numbers your carrier provided. Call the numbers before the show and on odd days and times to make sure your call is answered 24/7. If your contacts are unavailable after hours, they're not going to be much help when you encounter a disaster.

 Find out ahead of time how your carrier deals with late and damaged shipments. Any carrier that tells you it never loses or damages freight is fibbing. Knowing its policies upfront is critical, since knowing what it can and will do to help you is essential in troubleshooting the situation.

 Position two labels on each piece of freight in case one falls off. Label individual pieces of freight on your pallets, as freight pallets are sometimes broken down into individual pieces to fit on an almost-full truck. You can also place large labels on the outside of the stretch wrap or banding on your pallets that state "Do not break down." Also make sure all old labels have been removed, since they can easily cause confusion.

 Use black stretch wrap on your pallets so they stand out on the show floor in the sea of brown wooden crates and cardboard cartons on pallets. Neon-colored labels or brightly colored company logos on your crates can also help you identify your freight more easily if it's misplaced.

 Print your booth-space number in a large, bold font on your labels. Human error is a major cause of misplaced freight, so making your labels as legible as possible can go a long way toward avoiding the problem.

 Insure your shipments. Freight insurance may be available through your carrier, can be purchased independently, or may be covered under your company's existing property insurance. While this won't prevent your freight from going MIA, it will help your company recoup the cost of any permanently lost shipments.e