We had a fright this afternoon when the freight company called to tell us that the 1600 lb Tazzari stone grinding machine they were delivering had an "issue" during delivery.  The woman on the phone reported "I don't know what happened, but I do know that the crate is pretty much destroyed.  The machine looks OK, but the crate looks terrible.  I just wanted to let you know that before you see it."

Great, how do you interpret that?  I was trying to stay positive about the situation, but the woman on the phone was not helping my confidence.   She told me that they had brought the truck back to the depot to "repair" the crate so we would be able to unload it.  "Holy crap," I thought.  It is hard not to be pessimistic when they tell you that it was damaged enough to require repair just to unload the thing.

So, the truck finally shows up an hour later than scheduled and the driver skillfully backs up to the shop.  They wrapped the entire thing in about 50 layers of plastic so we couldn't see any damage.  He picked the thing up on a pallet jack and rolled it out toward the lift gate.  "You guys should stand back because in order to clear the lip on this thing, I gotta give it a run.  It will tip way out here and look like it's going to fall off, so if it does, just let it go.  I haven't had one fall off yet, but it does happen."

"Hmm," I thought to myself.  "I wonder how the crate was damaged in shipping."

So the guy takes a running start, the pallet jack clears the lip on the lift gate and the pallet, crate and 1600lb machine fly out the back, tip about 20 degrees and then slowly falls back down to equilibrium.  My heart stopped for about 3 seconds and finally begain working again at the end of the confidence instilling story that our driver told us about a woman being crushed by a 5000lb rock sculpture that fell off of a lift gate.  I must have been pale or something because he looked at me and then reassured us that "it was with another trucking company".

Note to self, perhaps when shipping a machine that you have been building a business around for 6 months and that is worth more than the cars sitting in your driveway, choosing the cheapest freight company may not provide the best value.

Anyway, aside from a few scratches and a few snapped plastic pieces, the damage appears minor.  We spent a few hours pulling the thing off of the pallet that had become fused to its undercarriage, but it is now sitting happily in the shop waiting for some power and a batch of skis.

We'll be spending the next week setting everything up and tuning the machine using a batch of old skis.  Zach will be coming out in October to supervise during our first production batch to ensure that everything is up to his standards of quality.  We're looking forward to getting started and we can't wait to get it fired up.