Friday was a Day......
I had a large Hancock and Moore Your Way Motion Sectional to get to a client in Northern PA, a 5 and a half hour drive from the store. We had delivery all set for today (Saturday) after bugging my carrier all week to make sure we could get it here no later than Friday. Obviously, if it doesn't arrive we can't deliver it, so the pressure was on the carrier to get it to my store. The freight line showed up at 1:30 p.m yesterday, just as it was starting to rain. No biggie, I've been working out in the rain for 37 years on furniture, and the order totally fills up my 16' truck as you see here:
I'm pretty happy, this is going to go off as planned, then I go to start the truck and ... "click.....click......click......click". The dual batteries on the diesel are dead. I can't believe this! Well, I knew they were on borrowed time since I last changed them about 5 years ago, but I was hoping they would last two more months because I'll sell the truck before August. Drat. These are not batteries carried at Costco or Wal Mart, they're hard to find. Most dealers would say "It's Friday afternoon, its pouring rain, and we can't make the delivery tomorrow, the truck is broke down". But I'm not most dealers....
I found a pair of batteries in stock, jumped in my pickup truck and fetched them up. Heavy buggers about 60 lb apiece and you have to sit on the wet ground to install them as they are low on the chassis.
Get them back to the store and I have no tools as I cleaned them all out when we moved the remaining inventory upstairs. My home is 17 miles away and a round trip to get tools will take an hour, instead I ask around and Mike at the Trophy Shop had a toolkit he let me borrow. Then, the connector cable from battery 1 to battery 2 pulled out from the fitting. Great. Now I need a bench vise to press that back in. Who has a bench vise in our complex? I bet the Jeweler did - and I was right. He did me a solid by pressing the clamp wire back together. The attachment nuts and washers were too far rusted to re-use, back to the auto parts store for new hardware. I look like a drowned rat because of course I didn't bring a raincoat to work. After two hours, finally get the new batteries in and the truck fueled up. I was tired when I got home and my wife took one look at me with my ruined clothes and still wet and said "What happened to you?" The joys of being a small bussiness owner is what....
My guys left at 5:30 a.m this morning, finished the delivery at 1:15 p.m. and got back to the store at 7 p.m. Long day for them, but the customer was happy and the truck ran great - so one in the WIN column. I try the best we can to never disappoint my customers!
Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
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