Dumpty.

Here's the Dump Truck.

Here's the box out for the hydraulic boom that extends into the bed about 18"



You see the problem with that box out is that from a functional perspective, the dump bed is now 18" shorter.  Which means my tractor doesn't fit.  This wiped the smile right off snakeskin shoes' face.  I didn't buy the truck.  Now I'm in L.A., in a wind storm, with a guy in snakeskin shoes.  I need to get to Bakersfield.  Snakeskin shoes was nice enough to drive me to Enterprise Rent-A-Wreck...sort of.  You see due to the wind, the power was out, so were the streetlights.  45 minutes into a 2.2 mile drive I jumped out planning to hoof it the last quarter mile.  No problem.  Now I'm walking through a very industrial area of L.A. with a check for $42,000.00 in my pocket, OK, not one of my best decisions, I survived.  Enterprise rental car was next.  No power there either, so Veronica used her pink cell phone to manually call in my rental.  She also called my business visa account to run my credit card; Wells Fargo asked to speak with me, the rep explained the large amount of usage on my account, about $1600.00 in the last 12 hours, somebody was having a fun morning.  Account closed, I think I had gone emotionally numb.  I retreated to my Ford Focus and mapped out my route to Bakersfield and beyond.  In another 2 hours I made it to the grapevine, who rents a car to a customer with only 1/8 of a tank of gas?  Union 76 my savior.  The wind pushed my feeble transportation around at will but I eventually got home around 7:30 pm. 

The good news?  Mario jumped online and found a newly posted truck only a few miles from the office.  It's a 2005 with only 5,200 miles on it and today we bought it for $4,000 less than the truck in L.A.  Oh...the tractor fits in it too!