I ordered a 3520 A on Wednesday one week ago today and it showed up on Monday this week! Yep, pays to be close to Tennessee.
I was promised that it would be delivered on a freight truck with a lift gate. Nope, came to the house in a regular freight tractor trailer rig! The driver opened the back rollup and there she sat at shoulder height. All 680 pounds plus another 80 pounds of bed extension and other stuff I had ordered.
After some query with the driver on why they brought it in a rig without the tail gate that was part of the deal, I decided to get that beast off the truck anyway. By the way, the driver had a bad knee and some tendency to tremble which I surmised was related to a long hard weekend of working on a bottle or two of Jack Black for the pain in that knee. I should have offered him some Advil but I was in a hurry, it was about to rain.
I went down the hill and retrieved my truck, some 2x6 timber, 4 ft. pry bar, leather gloves, and a back brace. Up the hill with that truck and backed up to the back of that freight trailer, close coupled with my tail gate in the up position. To the amazement of the driver who was watching all this, I took that pry bar and rotated that crate until it was hanging off the back of that freight trailer over the timber skids I had propped on the tailgate of my truck. Using that pry bar, I tilted the monster over the back of the freight trailer and down she slid on those timbers into the bed of my truck. By the way, the pallet was getting pretty beat up in all this prying and pushing.
Back down the hill I drove, albeit slowly, with that 680 lb. crate tilted up on the tailgate on those timbers. It took some real prying and working to get those 2x6s out from under the tilted crate and get her down into the bottom of the truck. It was quite an achievement by my lonesome. My darling wife had left that morning to go stimulate the economy and I was there alone.
Of course the bigger problem came next, how to get that baby out of the truck by myself before it rained on it. Monday a.m. and all my potential help was at work or not available. Because it was about to rain again, I decided that baby was coming out of that truck. I backed it up to my garage and opened the crate in the back of the truck. I then disassembled the thing to the smallest pieces I could and out they came. I tilted and slid pieces and parts until I got that truck unloaded and there she now lying in the garage.
After the one and half hour battle, I had enough for one day (spelled worn out!) and decided I was waiting on some help. That new lathe is still laying there because of some work commitments but she will be moving on Friday night through the garage into my workshop, be assembled, and hopefully be running in short order. I wouldn’t do it this way again. My advice is make the freight company deliver it using a lift gate as ordered and have a way to move it once it is on the ground. This machine is way too heavy to be doing something like this alone unless your way bigger and meaner than the average Joe. I lucked out this time and got it done without injuring me or the machine. By the way, I have some help coming Friday night with the promise of dinner and a good bottle of wine, after we get it moved!
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