Truckers
Except for shipping cattle, I didn’t have much experience with truckers.
Until last week.
Last August, I agreed to buy a 150-psi boiler from a company in Ohio.
My only stipulation was that it needed to fit through a 72-inch by 71-inch space.
The boiler was going into my old concrete building so spaces are inflexible, to say the least.
The salesman assured me that the whole massive apparatus could be disassembled so the pieces would fit through double doors.
Last Monday, a trucking brokerage called to say five pallets would be delivered on Friday at 11 a.m.
One of the pallets held a 97-inch-high piece.
On Wednesday, the local door expert removed the door frames and my go-to carpenters installed a temporary plywood frame.
I had an inch of extra clearance.
Friday’s weather forecast said we would work in single digits, up to 5 inches of snow and enough breeze to cause frostbite within minutes.
On Thursday morning, a second trucker called to say he would deliver two more pallets, one of which held a piece 128” high, on Friday at 6 a.m.
Apparently, the boiler salesman had quit and nobody else in the company got the memo about disassembling my boiler.
Nobody was taking responsibility and the truckers were on their way.
I told the California trucker it would be dark, frigid and slick.
“I’ll be there at 6 a.m.,” he growled.
I scrambled to organize a crew to lift heavy, tall pieces off two trucks in a snowstorm, betting lots of cash that neither truck would arrive on time.
I don’t have the skill, knowledge or equipment to unload and slide these pallets into place so I called the people I always depend on.
By Friday at 5:30 a.m., I was at the building, anxious about fitting an 8700-pound, 97-inch piece and a 3600-pound, 128-inch piece of equipment through a 98-inch tall door.
My go-to guys were on standby.
Ranchers solve problems on the fly all the time, but this character trait makes most people extremely nervous.
Fortunately, my go-to guys think the same way I think.
At 10:30 a.m., the second trucker with the tallest piece called to say he was two or three hours from Conrad. He wasn’t sure whether he was in Butte or Helena, but he was on I-15.
By 11:30, the first trucker with five pallets called to say he couldn’t find the address.
I jumped in my truck and found him idling two blocks away.
I flagged cars away from unloaders in the street while my go-to guys skidded the heaviest piece through the door and 50 feet into its permanent location.
By 2:30, the second trucker called to say he was 4 minutes away, but he had run out of fuel.
We all laughed through our frozen fingers.
I found his pickup and trailer blocking traffic on the highway.
We added 5 gallons of diesel and he followed me to town.
By then, the boiler installer was there to assess the situation.
While the trucker sat and played on his phone, we unloaded the pieces.
We stripped the protective padding from the tallest piece and discovered bolts that could easily be removed so it would fit through my opening.
Meanwhile, the trucker left without my signature for delivery.
By 6 p.m., all of the equipment was inside and my go-to guys were completing some must-do carpentry before they called it a night.
All of us were cold, hungry and tired.
The boiler installer called me on his way back to Great Falls.
He had just passed the second trucker, stranded on the side of the road.
It looked like he had run out of fuel.
I can’t make this stuff up.