Day 41 Tuesday alaskaorbust.blog
I was up at about 5:00 AM worrying about moving the travel trailer and other materials to allow the shipping container to be placed in the yard. Made coffee and read the news until about 7 when I called Summer’s phone and woke her up. She wasn’t real happy to arise in the dark. She was even less happy about moving stuff in the dark, so we didn’t.
*Just before daybreak about 8:30 Brian arrived to move the gravel around some more. He said he wasn’t entirely happy with the way he’d left it. Looked good to me. Summer and I set about moving the gas grille and other stuff stored under the overhang of the travel trailer and moved the trailer onto the property just cleared.
*Moments after Brian departed, the driver delivering the container called and said that he would be arriving in the afternoon instead of the morning. Summer and I decided that it would be a good time for a nap. She went back upstairs and I crawled over stuff to get back to my bed in the TT. At 11:30 Summer called me to get me out of the trailer. I awoke to Day Two of DAY 41.
*We went into Homer to get a few things and the mail only to have the truck driver call and say he was in Homer 2 hours earlier than he expected. We rushed home and arrived a few minutes ahead of the container.
* After surveying the site we were told that there was no way he could out the container where we wanted. The best he could do was drop it into the right of way in front of the house. Then he charged us nearly double his original estimate. We really had no choice but pay him what he asked. Screwed again. It seems a common thing here.
*With the container dropped in the middle of everything we struggled to decide what to do. Late lunch and some coffee later we called Brian. We needed to use his dozer to move the damned container to the proper location. $150 and two hours later the container was on the gravel, the gravel smoothed out, the road back bladed to avoid further aggravating our only neighbor driving his brand new black shiny car down the ‘street’. By this time it was approaching dark and Summer and I were re-tired as in tired again.
*We had homemade chili for dinner. Summer started it earlier and only lacked putting a few beans into before we could eat.
Alaska or bust 
Did you use a company to deliver your container? I’ve never heard of COD in this day and age, and changing the rate so drastically seems shady to me, especially considering he couldn’t drive his rig well enough to put the container where it needed to be. I would contact the company, if possible, and explain what happened and ask why an agreed upon amount, even if it was an estimate, would change so drastically.
Delivering a container across country is not like a plumbing job, where there may be unexpected expenses as the job progresses and new issues arise. The driver literally hooked the container onto the rig, and drove the mapped out path the allowed number of hours each day, using about the same amount of fuel they would have estimated he’d need to use for the trip – basically, the cost of the entire trip should have been considered and figured into the quote, so there should have been very little variation at the end of the job. If there was trouble with the truck, that is the company and/or company’s responsibility, just like you wouldn’t pay extra for your pizza if the delivery guy busted his radiator on the way to you. If the quoted price was being raised, maybe fuel prices went up unexpectedly, you should have been kept informed. What would he have done if you couldn’t pay so much more at delivery with no notice? Kept your container? I’m pretty sure that’s illegal under the circumstances.
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It was his company. I think he’s one of those bid for the job type things. His number was given to my Dad from the feed store he bought the container from.
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