You Tote 16 Tons...

 

Bob gets a steel delivery fairly often as he makes his metal supports for plants out of various strips and rods. Often, the amount he gets is "reasonable"and he simply drags it on a wheelie cart down to his studio. But if he gets a particularly large, heavy shipment and the ground is firm enough, he drives it down. Fortunately, the ground was still frozen, as the above delivery was particularly large! Apparently, the steel company either did a job and the measurement was wrong or there was a serious amount of "drops" (*1) and they offered them to Bob cheap. He jumped at the opportunity to get a slew of steel in a size he often uses... but it was a really big load!

Maybe this doesn't look like a huge amount to you but believe me, it was a ton (literally!) of steel. I like to help Bob out by assisting him in relocating the steel from our driveway, down to his studio. I can't even imagine how hard that would be to schlepp all of that metal by oneself, let alone how long it would take. Besides, it was supposed to rain tomorrow and Bob didn't want the steel to get wet and then rust making for a lot more clean up.

So step one was simply picking all that steel up and loading it onto the truck. (We did about a third of it on the previous day as there was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much to consider doing all in one morning.) So we made four trips down with approximately the same amount of steel bands, picking them up from the driveway and then unloading them at Bob's studio.

Above, an interior shot of Bob's studio, where all that steel was being stored. Just for context, there were 672 bands of steel, each about 68 inches long. It felt like more! I off-loaded them from the truck and Bob stacked them in the above corner of his studio. Need I tell you we're both pretty tired now? But at least the steel is where it needed to be and we don't have to do anything like this again, any time soon!

There's Bob and his glow-in-the-dark hands, standing on a pile of 20 foot lengths. We'll sleep well tonight!

(*1)  Drops are the left over "scraps" after the size that was ordered was cut from the 20' piece.