This started the nightmare of the shipping process. I went back to the company I had talked to before, the price had gone up, of course. So, I got a bunch of buddies together and we moved the smoker out to the driveway and we built a pallet around it. Finally the day arrived and the shipper came, notice I didn’t say shippers. The pallet jack he had on the truck was a one size fits every pallet except the one we built, so we had to build a new pallet using their jack measurements. Finally, a week later, a shipper (again, just one guy) came again to pick up the 1900 pounds of smoker and pallet. Me, him, and a neighbor who just happened to come home got it barely loaded onto the truck and off it went.
This is the point where the story should end, but this is my luck we are talking about, so no. They went to drop it off at the new owner’s house and realized they couldn’t get it off the truck, so had to reschedule. The second time, on April 19th, 2016, they were finally able to get the pallet on solid ground, but it was obvious that something was wrong. We don’t know what actually happened, but it appears that they dropped it. From some height. Hard enough that the metal casters broke through new 2 X 4’s spaced an inch apart and covered with 1” plywood. Did over $200 worth of repairable damage to the smoker and shredded the custom cover I had made for it. Good thing we had the insurance. It took another couple weeks of dealing with the insurance, and ordering replacements for everything, and the ordeal was finally behind me.
