“They were a mere 15 minutes from site when the lights when on behind them…”
Caleb Cillit owned a small company called We-Cill-it Concrete Construction. Dave Strong was his lead hand, a big burly guy who could run a wheelbarrow with one hand and knew everything there was to know about construction, breakfast and race cars. Sam Scroll was a high school kid who didn’t know anything but could carry stuff. He just did what he was told and was happy for the free icecap he got every day. The 3 of them did interior and exterior slabs, foundations and retaining walls. They did good work and had happy customers.
One Thursday they arrived at a sidewalk and patio prep job after cutting and stripping a driveway in the morning. The gravel was on site in front of the house, and they had a plate-tamper in the back of the truck.
But unlike the homeowner promised, his neighbor had not done a good job of digging out the topsoil and there was no way they were going to complete this without renting a mini excavator.
Caleb called the rental shop for a 3.5 ton mini.
“Yep, we have 3.5-ton machine here, the service counter guy said, we can load up in the next hour and bring it out. We will have it there by 2:30.”
“How much for the delivery?” Caleb asked.
“Its $495.00 plus 5% fuel charge,” the guy said.
Caleb frowned to himself, and briefly wondered how it would be to sit in an airconditioned showroom selling services at exorbitant prices, “ok I will think about it and get back to you,” he grumbled.
“$495.00 to deliver a stinkin mini ex?” he ranted when off the phone.
“Yea that’s way too bloody much,” Dave agreed, we will just pick it up in the morning, we can do it for a fraction of that. We can push out our pour from 10 am till noon. Sam scrolled through his Instagram while Caleb and Dave hashed it out.
The We-Cill-It crew went as far as they could go without the mini ex and packed up at 3:00 pm and headed back to the shop. They loaded the concrete pouring tools and hooked up the flatbed trailer.
Friday morning arrived bright and beautiful. Typically, they left the shop at 6:00 AM. But since the rental shop didn’t open until 7 it didn’t make sense to leave until 6:30.
At the rental shop they waited for 20 minutes while the guy showed a homeowner how to use a dual slope rotating laser level.
When they finally got the thing on their trailer, they were short a chain and binder. Somebody must have stolen it, or it was lying back at the shop. Dave went inside and 25 minutes and $159.00 later came out with a new chain and binder.
“They had to cut the chain yet” he grumbled.
An hour after arriving at the rental shop, they were back on the road, with a 49-minute drive ahead of them to the jobsite. Tim Hortons took them 20 minutes because they couldn’t use the drive-through because of the trailer. And the busload of students on a class trip took a while to order.
They were a mere 15 minutes from site when the lights when on behind them.
“Ahh…buddy, said Dave, sorry to inform you but that looks like a green and white one…”
The MTO officer took 30 minutes combing over the truck and trailer and another 15 writing up a report. When she finally came back to the drivers’ window she handed in a wreath of papers. “I can look past most of the things, such as the binders being backwards, she said, but you need to change the right rear trailer tire before you can carry on, it has a cut in it.”
“But I got concrete at noon, Caleb sputtered, that’s not gonna work.”
“Well, I guess just get them to just drop it off for you”, she said. “Her hair was pulled back so tight that her eyebrows were permanently raised, and when she frowned it pulled her ears forward. “I can wait till you have changed the tire or pull the license plate. Up to you.”
Upon hearing this Dave got out of the truck and unloaded the mini ex. They took a chain and lifted the trailer with the mini ex and wrestled the spare tire off its rusty perch and bolted it on. The spare tire was slack and needed air. They limped 500 feet up the shoulder of the road to a car garage to get some air, Dave came rattling behind with the mini ex.
At 11:00 am they arrived on site. The sun was hot and high in the sky. There was no way they were going to be ready for noon. Caleb called ready-mix and tried to book for 2:30pm. They were busy then but could bring it for 4. That was too late, the street was already filling up with office workers coming home for the weekend. Caleb booked the concrete for Monday morning 7:am.
At 3 Pm on the way back to the rental shop with the mini ex sailing smoothly behind the pickup, Sam suddenly piped up from the back seat where he was sandwiched between laser boxes, lunch buckets and empty Gatorade bottles.
“Hey how much money did we save by picking up the mini?” he asked.
“I would say about 200 bucks,” Dave replied, “We had to buy a binder and chain, but we needed more anyway.”
“I have just been thinking…” Sam rejoined.
“That’s definitely a rarity,” Caleb grunted.
Sam wasn’t deterred, “I’m thinking,” he said again. “If the rental shop would have delivered yesterday at 2:30, we could have finished the prep yesterday. We would have poured this morning and would still be heading home right now. We could have stripped and cut tomorrow morning. Now we need to pour this Monday. We can’t do that basement floor first thing Tuesday morning because we need to strip and cut this. That’s 2 lost days and not thinking yet about the liability we incur by pulling this old trailer. That rental shop could have charged us 5 grand to deliver, and we would be saving money.”
Sam went back to his ice cap and scrolling through Instagram.
Caleb opened his mouth to say something but closed it again. He stared into the rear-view mirror at the kid in the back seat and then stared back at the road. The yellow lines became a blur.
Maybe that kid was thinking…
