We Got the Fridges!

Wyatt and Eugene moving the second fridge off the second truck. The job is almost done.

Yesterday, after 5 weeks of waiting, we finally picked up our two glass front fridges from Roger Billings in Shelbyville, IN.

Originally we were going to rent a 17' U-haul box truck to get the fridges but that was going to cost something like $275 plus another $150 or so for gasoline. So we nixed that idea and decided we would rent an open trailer for $39.95 from U-haul and use Wyatt's truck to haul the trailer (since he just bought a truck with a nice hitch). We were fine with than plan for several weeks.

Than we could not get a hold of Roger. So we did what anyone who has spent $500 on an eBay auction and than cannot find the seller in order to make arrangements to pick up the items. We freaked out and put a hold on the credit card that was used for the transaction. Than I tried contacting him via eBay (since using his regular email was getting me no where nor were the phone numbers I had) and Voila! That worked. He had not disappeared, he gave me a working phone number and he was expecting us to come by and get the things ASAP. Great. We quickly cancelled the hold on the credit card.

As I mentioned we were planning using Wyatt and his truck to get these things. Wyatt thought he had a line on a free trailer we could use but that fell through so we were back to renting a U-Haul trailer and deciding on a time to do the deed.

Than came an invite to go have dinner at our friend's Jules and rosie (for Rosie's B-day). So over to their house we went and while there started talking about the fridge adventure. Immediatly Rosie wanted to go to Shelbyville. I'm talking about that night.

We did not go to Shelbyville on Sunday night but we did decide we could use Jule's truck and get both fridges in her bed. Got home, looked up the dimensions on the fridges and found they were a bit bigger on the long side than we thought so using Jule's truck was not going to get the job done. We would need to also use Wyatt's truck. So I sent Wyatt an email explaining that we had changed the plans and would be using 2 trucks and no trailer.

Monday morning dawned frigid and cloudy and shortly after 9am Wyatt was at our house ready to go. We were almost ready to go, we were in the middle of feeding the dogs and having a morning smoke. Got done with that and collected up rope, blankets and other things we thought we would need. Wyatt was doubtful that this would work, that there was no place to tie down the fridges, that it would be too hard to get them in and out, etc. basically he regaled us with a bunch of negativety which Eugene chose to ignore while he collected the things we would need for the job.

We drove down to Jules' house. We spent about 20 minutes getting her truck ready to go-it needed oil, air in a tire and gas. Than we were ready to go and started west towards Shelbyville. We had put bad gas in the tank which made the truck run very rough so we stopped in Liberty to fill the tank up and to put some dry gas in the tank. That made the truck run much, much better and we went on our way west on St Rt 44. I had an uneventful trip and some nice conversation with Jules (who is one of my favorite people on the planet). Wyatt and Eugene were behind us.

Got to Shelbyville and found the place with little trouble and after wandering around the place found Roger and soon he was on his fork lift putting fridges on the trucks. By this point Wyatt was pretty convinced that the fridges would not go on the trucks correctly and after they were on he said there was no way to tie them down on his truck so Roger quietly got some new tie downs and tied the fridges down onto Wyatt's truck. So all was ready to go for the trip home.

But Roger was not through with us. He is a concrete person who is in his mid 50's and wants to get out of the business. He makes pavers and statuary and is retiring and selling his building at the end of this month. So this meant he needed to get rid of as much stuff as possible so he gave us a digital scale, several wooden bushel baskets (which we don't really need) some plastic crates that stack and have lids (something we do need), several boxes of tacky objets d'art that Rosie will sell at the 127 yard sale and two rolls of plastic wrap that I have no idea what we will do with. But hey, it was all free. Gotta love free stuff.

With two trucks loaded with fridges and free stuff we set off towards home. We stopped at a Pizza Hut for lunch than headed east.

The trip home was uneventful (thankfully). We drove in the drive way backed Jules' truck up to the store and got busy unloading. Again Wyatt was negative and told us how this would not work. Within 10 minutes we had the first fridge off the truck and in the store. The second fridge on Wyatt's truck was even easier (despite him being even more negative and even more convinced we would not get the fridge off of his truck in one piece) to get off the truck but did get stuck in the doorway for a minute before we finagled it so it would go in the store.

So 30 minutes after we arrived we were done with fridge moving, other than getting them out of the doorway in the store and along the walls where they can be plugged in and used.

Today it is snowing and I am glad we got this done yesterday.