Advice needed for road travel while pulling a trailer

[rmorey]

I've decided to go back for the rest of the granite. The projects are piling up in my head. My BBQ zone has grown and moved off my deck to a new interlock patio that will be created and will now incorporate a bar at the deck level. We're redoing the full kitchen at the cottage and I'm going to do a granite shower and vanity in the roughed in bathroom area we have in the basement at home. This is all on top of the projects I started off with and I have several other ideas and several friends have an interest in pieces for redoing vanities. At this rate, I'll go through all the granite without having to sell any of it!

I bought a wet polisher tool off eBay. I get the wet grinder, a bunch of sanding/polishing disks, a router bit for beveling the edge, a blade for cutting radial arcs, a blade for cutting straight, a cupped grinder disk and a hole saw for faucets. All in, delivered it was $220 which I thought was great. I'm still waiting for delivery. Hopefully it holds up long enough to finish the projects I have in mind.

So, quitting your day job and becoming an entrepreneur? I know... you could rent the space from the guy where you got the granite. All you have to do is move all that granite back and set up shop!! :laughing: :laughing:

 

[Xfaxman]

I've decided to go back for the rest of the granite. The projects are piling up in my head. My BBQ zone has grown and moved off my deck to a new interlock patio that will be created and will now incorporate a bar at the deck level. We're redoing the full kitchen at the cottage and I'm going to do a granite shower and vanity in the roughed in bathroom area we have in the basement at home. This is all on top of the projects I started off with and I have several other ideas and several friends have an interest in pieces for redoing vanities. At this rate, I'll go through all the granite without having to sell any of it!

I bought a wet polisher tool off eBay. I get the wet grinder, a bunch of sanding/polishing disks, a router bit for beveling the edge, a blade for cutting radial arcs, a blade for cutting straight, a cupped grinder disk and a hole saw for faucets. All in, delivered it was $220 which I thought was great. I'm still waiting for delivery. Hopefully it holds up long enough to finish the projects I have in mind.

Don't forget the camera, we need pictures.

 

[kiotiken]

I'll take a few, but it won't be all that exciting this time. The pieces are smaller this time (8 ft long, but only 3 ft tall) and are all on large skids so I'm just going to pick them up with the pallet forks, put them level to the trailer, walk them over and tip them up to the rack. My last guess was there's about 3000 lbs of stone left which is less than half of the last trip. Should be out of there within the hour.

 

[kiotiken]

I'll take a few, but it won't be all that exciting this time.

Wow, was I wrong. So I arrived at 6:55am on Sat morning. Even though I'd stopped by the building owners office on Thrus to tell him I was coming for the rest on Sat morning and to leave the gate open, then called again Friday afternoon to remind him, the gate was locked. I scrambled to find a number for him and eventually got the owner to open the gate about 45 mins later.

Since I had already taken the metal rack that held the granite, I left the rest of it on these 6 foot pallets that they had before I left with the first load. The pieces were smaller, so instead of putting each one in a sling, I just lifted the pallets level to the trailer deck and my dad (who met me there) and I just slid them on and stood them up.

In order to lift a few of the pallets, I had to get the pallet forks under the skid since they weren't open on the side for the forks. They were sitting in gravel so a small amount of gravel was getting picked up on the ends of the forks and I was tracking a little gravel around the lot as I was trying to load. This is a very industrial area behind a building with lots of other stuff thrown around, so I didn't think much of it.

The building owner, the guy who opened the gate, came over with two brooms and told me I had to clean the parking lot. Keep in mind, I have a 16 ft trailer parked across it, and my DK45 maneuvering all around it to load from both sides, so this is a fairly large area we're talking about. I told him (not politely since he's a bit of a jack *** to start, but not rudely either) that I wouldn't be cleaning his parking lot. Things went south from there very quickly. He immediately told me that he wouldn't let me leave until I cleaned it up! Within a minute, I went from loading the granite to a full out yelling argument with this guy. He went over to the gate and started to close it. My dad was into it with him as well and the two of us had some words and some warnings for him, but he got the gates closed and was going to lock them. Well, I'm boiling over right about now and the tractor is idling away right behind me with the pallet forks on the loader, so I jump on, slide the forks under the gate on one of the hinge sides and raised them to the gate height. I yelled at him the next choice was his, if he put the lock on, the gate was gone. More yelling and arguing ensued and I ended up jumping off the tractor and we all continued yelling for a while. A some point he actually locks the gate :confused2:, but I realized, as much fun as destroying the entire gate and fence would be at this point, he's committing a criminal offense and if I do it, he'll call the cops on me and I'll be the one answering questions. I was pretty sure I'd still be in the right but why go through that and the fall out that's bound to come up.

So I dialed 9-1-1. I showed him my phone and asked if that's how he wanted to end this and he said, sure, call them I don't care. So I did and I told them I was being forcibly held captive against my will and gave them the address and the guys name. He took the opportunity to call some of his "buddies" and then we all just waited. He pulled some skids in front of the gates (I guess to stop me from just driving through them) with the lock still on. After a while, he got up and walked to the front of the building. His "buddies" had arrived and he went to met them, but first he unlocked the gate (I didn't even see him do it) and left the lock in place, but not latched. I had already used the time to tie down the load, reconnect the trailer and I was ready to go, so we opened the gate, gave the lock a toss and left. I drove down the road and called 9-1-1 again and they asked me to wait there to talk to the police. Within a few minutes, two cars showed up and I told them what happened. They were very nice, said I did the right thing, asked if I had all the granite I wanted or if I wanted their help to get the rest (the rest was the garbage I didn't want and I actually threw some off the trailer before leaving to piss him off, so I told them I got it all). They confirmed that it was basically forcible confinement, but they called it something else (something like depriving my personal liberty of movement?) and they said they were going to go over and read him the riot act.

So, it turned out not to be so boring. I've replayed it a bunch of times in my head, and as much as I was dying to rip the fence out, it all played out the best way it could have and I think I was smart playing it with my head.

 

[kiotiken]

Here's what I did get.

 

[Xfaxman]

Wow, is right. Glad it turned out okay, and you are not in jail!

Thanks for the pictures, looks like it was worth the trip and the trouble! :thumbsup:

 

[LD1]

Wow. Some people. Glad it all worked out

 

[kiotiken]

Wow. Some people. Glad it all worked out

Some people is right. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, that's for sure. It would seem pretty obvious to me that there was no way he could legally detain me, and certainly no physical way he could detain me either. His little fit meant that not only did he still have a parking lot to sweep, but all the little garbage pieces I agreed to take as part of the deal were left for him to deal with to. I'd take a wild guess there was 1000 lbs of granite left, one usable piece I should have grabbed while I was packing up and waiting to get out, but the rest was simply garbage, nothing bigger than 24" X 24", some the size of your hand. From my experience at a couple of the local dumps, that would be about $50 in tipping fees :thumbsup:

I'm happy with the way things happened, but it could have been much different. I wish I had :stirthepot: a little and gone back for that one last piece with the police right in front of him, but there was no need to waste their time with anything so moronic.

We're in the process of choosing pieces for the various projects that we've decided to do. Once we do that, I'm going to post the rest to kijiji and set up a little web site with individual pictures of each piece along with dimensions and possible applications. My wife has gone along with this (admittedly) crazy project, but she would like me to try and break even on it just out of principle. I'm excited to learn how to polish the stuff and to do some of the projects I have floating in my head. I also see doing them over the next couple years as time permits, so I don't feel pressured and can enjoy it a little more.

 

[kiotiken]

My new toy showed up this week. Everything you need to cut, grind, drill, router and polish granite.

 

[aczlan]

Nice.

Aaron Z