Day 12 Monday, 8/13/01

Up at 7:30 to go to Bradons to pick up the trailer. No problems. When I arrive back at camp, there is a forklift, 18 wheeler, Laurie and Richard in the road. I grab Laurie and head up the driveway to build a platform for the trailer so the forks of the forklift don't hit the trailer fenders. We head back down and Richard has most of the pallets taken off the truck. That's great, we will have the driver gone in no time. Richard loads the trailer up with 2 pallets of log home. I head up the driveway. Richard picks up a short pallet with the forklift and follows me up the driveway. No problem. This is going to work fine I think.

We lay down tarps and 4x4's and set the pallets on them. We put the stuff for the roof and higher course logs in first as we won't need them right away. So far so good. We head back down for then next load. Richard loads up the trailer. He then makes a critical mistake. He picks up a 20 foot wide, 6000 pound pallet with the forklift and attempts to go up the not 20 foot wide driveway. Laurie and I just watch. He makes it a third of the way up and fails to negotiate between 2 two trees about 18 feet apart. He keeps trying, why I don't know. He bangs the logs into the trees repeatedly, nearly dropping the whole thing as it shifts on the lift. Laurie and I are in the truck watching. We get out and go to Richard and tell him this is why I rented a trailer so I didn't have this problem. He just kind of shrugs. The forklift has dug up the driveway and is now stuck. He has it stuck in the driveway and between the trees. I tell him to wait and I go get my chainsaw. I cut down the tree holding him up. The cops arrive. They ask me if that's my house in the road down there. I chuckle and say yes. He sees what we are doing and leaves. Thank god for small miracles. At this point it would be very difficult to back a forklift with a 20 foot wide 6000 pound unbalanced load down a driveway. We elect to try to push him over the hump with the truck. We put a 4x4 between the bumper of my truck and forklift. I push and he drives. It works, but the forklift has broken the hydraulic fitting off my plow pump. I'm getting unhappy. We get to the top and unload. We head back down. Laurie and I rake the driveway as smooth as we can but its pretty rutted up by the spinning forklift tires. Richard loads up the trailer and breaks the platform on the trailer by not watching where the forks were. Great. Inexplicably, Richard picks up another 20 foot wide pallet with the forklift and heads up the driveway! Laurie and I look in disbelief. I yell out to him but he can't hear me. He has hit a tree and the load has partially broken and the lumber has shifted. I go up to him and say "I thought we agreed that the long packs were to go on the &^%$#@ trailer only!!" He replies that he thought this one would be OK because it was "lighter". I get the saw again and cut down another tree. Now I'm mad. He is flushing my plan down the toilet. He is rushing and it is costing me. I'm going to end up with an expensive pile of kiln dried firewood. I BACK the truck and trailer DOWN the driveway. Richard BACKS the forklift DOWN the driveway. Richard loads the shifted pallet from the forklift onto the already loaded trailer. We head up the driveway, making it half way before the whole load shifts and nearly falls off. We stop and re secure as best we can and continue up. At the top, tongue and groove pine is hanging out of its bundle. We pull these pieces out and lay them on tarp. It starts to rain. Now I'm really mad. Brenda tries to calm me down saying any damaged pieces will be replaced, but I'm not having it. This shouldn't have happened. Haste makes waste. I unhook the trailer from the truck and bring the truck down the driveway to tow the forklift up. It needs to be towed up because Richard has dug the driveway up so badly that even an unloaded forklift can't get sufficient traction to climb the hill. Laurie and I make repairs to the platform and re-hook the trailer. We repeat the load the trailer, bring it up, unhook the trailer, tow the forklift up, re-hook the trailer, unload the trailer routine twice. On the third try, the truck can't get the forklift up the driveway. I snap. I got up the driveway and get the backhoe. I chain the forklift to the backhoe and succeed in dragging it up.

We unload. Two more trips and we finished at around 6:00 PM. I fume.

Hot, light shower