I'm traveling tomorrow with a friend who insists we use curbside check-in at SFO. I've always skipped this because I read somewhere that more bags are lost from curbside check-ins than from inside. I tried searching here to get the answer to my question, but the search form barfs on three-letter words like the "San" part in "San Francisco."

So anyway, does anyone know here if the bags at SFO curbside check-in are immediately placed on a conveyor belt that takes them down into the bowels of the baggage handling area, or are they piled on a hand truck and then some skycap wheels them in from time to time?

I know this is neurotic, but my reasoning is that if the bag immediately gets brought into the handling system on a conveyor belt, then it's not any different from inside check-in except for the $2.00 fee. So I can deal with it. But if it's some guy wheeling my bag around in a pile of other bags, I worry -- what if the hand cart sits there too long and my bag misses the 45-minute cut off? What if my bag falls off the cart? And so on.

I freakin' hate checking bags, but I have no choice on this trip.

Thanks for helping me with this extremely silly question!