I got up bright and early this morning so I could beat the Tampa rush hour traffic and made my way towards Ocala. I pulled into a rest area a little South of Ocala and called the customer to get directions to where I neeeded to pick up the drilling machine I was to haul to IL.
He gave me the needed directions, telling me they were in the NE corner of the flea market. Huh? Flea market? Did you say a flea market? "Yes" he replied, "Our office is in the NE corner of the flea market."
Oh, ummm, ok.
Well sure enough there was this company's office right there in the flea market. Doesn't really give me the impression of professionalism I like, but whatever. I didn't see anyone around so I called him again and let him know I was there. He said he was about three minutes away.
When he arrived he said the drilling machine was on an adjoining piece of property and I should follow him.What could I do except comply? That's when the real fun started.
He led me back out of the flea market and further down the skinny road I taken to reach it. A few miles down he made a left onto a very, very skinny sand road. Here's when I started to worry. Firstly, I wasn't even sure my long rig could make the turn. It did, but with the trailer wheels dropping down the edge of the ditch a bit.
The road was basically wet sand as there had been a lot of rain. Now I was concerned about getting stuck. Wet sand is as bad as snow in many ways. I engaged the power divider lock which causes power to be evenly divided between all of the drive wheels instead of sending more to the one that turns the fastest which is the normal way it works, and followed him down this winding road.
I had to ease around a large tree growing right in the middle of the road at one point. That's when I started noticing that I was following him into a swamp. Oh, this just can't be good. Sure enough, by the time we reached the destination we were, as far as I could tell, right smack in the middle of the swamp. This really isn't the ideal place to be in a big rig, know what I mean Vern?
He wanted me to detach right there in the so-called road so they could drive the drilling machine onto the trailer. Well, I had other priorities at this point and numero uno was how the hell was I going to get turned around? He pointed off to one side and said "Just back it in there and turn around, you shouldn't get too stuck". I walked over to where he was pointing and it was nothing but soup. Not a chance.
I told him that nothing was going on this trailer until after I got myself turned around and pointing back out as the extra weight would just make me sink even more, and also there was no way in hell I was going to back into that swampy piece of ground. At that point I took off walking a bit further up the road to see what my options were.
I found a point where the road forked and off to one side was a large willow tree. Exactly what I was looking for. Willows spread their roots out in all directions fairly shallow and those roots tend to make the ground more firm. After examining things I decided that was my best option for getting turned around.
I drove up to the fork and jacked my front over and ran straight at the willow, getting as close to it as I could. I had to do this several times to work the back end of the trailer around without backing it right into the swap, but I finally got it jacked around and I was pointing back the way I had come in. Now I was feeling a little better. Not much, but a little.
I drove back out to the point we had stopped, and proceeded to do my detach, let them load the machine, reattach, and chain it down.
He then asks me if I have the bill of lading. Huh? The shipper (him) is supposed to provide that. He didn't have one. Ah well, here we go again. I told him to write down all the needed information; shipper info, consignee info, and info about the machine. I then took his scribblings, climbed into my truck, fired up my laptop and printer, and had three copies of a nice professional looking bill of lading in about three minutes flat.
He just looked at them, looked at me, and said "I thought you didn't have this?" I struggled to not laugh at him. I just said something about the marvels of modern technology, had him sign my copies, left him one, and got the hell out of there.
It was a bit squishy going out but I did make it after dodging a tree that had fallen partially in the road during the time I was back there.
The things I get myself into.