2024-06-07 — WT Heroes

(written on the 9)

Busy day and somewhat productive.

First thing in the morning, I called Springdale tractor to get the quote for what it was going to cost to have them reseal the two hydraulic cylinder rods that I brought them.

Despite the fact that they were already disassembled cylinders that had already been removed from the skid steer, their quote was $454 after tax.

😶

No. Just… No.

So I Left the house, drove into Rogers, passing all the main tornado devastation for the first time. It was pretty gnarly. Gratefully, it was nothing like the Joplin tornado from a decade ago, Pat it really is amazing to me just how powerful wind can be.

And how localized.

Some buildings completely destroyed, and just next door, buildings with little damage comparatively.

I ran into harbor freight with the hopes of buying the sockets that I needed to do the job myself. I also spend a whole bunch of time researching the Uber heavy duty impact wrenches that Milwaukee sells. Just the base tool is like $700 without batteries, Or something like that.

So I went down to Springdale tractor, picked up the hydraulic cylinder rods, and then I decided to drive over to WT equipment, where I bought the seal kits for the cylinder rods. I walked inside, explained what I needed done, and the guy told me that it shouldn’t be any more than $145 plus tax, that I would just be billed for whatever time it actually took.

A $300 difference? Definitely. I’ll take it. That estimate made a lot more sense to me given the amount of time that it was going to take to do the Job.

So I left both the rods, and the seal kits, with them and headed home.

The next thing on my to-do list for the day was to head over to my pickup truck to start cleaning out the bed of the truck. That’s part of the effort to get everything cleaned out and squared away to reduce the load that I have weighing on my mind for when I get out of Dodge.

I know I’m putting extra pressure on myself, but I just want to be In a place where I don’t have to be looking forward to a mile-long to-do list when I get home.

I am very grateful that I do have the ability and means to take off and take this time to myself. I’m still going to work of course, but I’m just going to do as Bob, and take a vacation from my problems. 😆

Anyway, I sort of multitasked a little bit. I parked my truck over by the burn pile I was working on a few days ago, and A unloaded the stuff that could be burned into the burn pile, and loaded up the burn pile with more branches and what not.

I attended the fire while I sorted through the stuff in the truck bed, putting the trash in the burn barrel that I had, putting the metal That needed to go to the metal scrap yard toward the back of the bed, and putting everything that I was keeping toward the cabin and of the bed.

Threw away the trash. Added more metal to the bed from the metal pile that I have by our house as well as more metal from the metal pile by the dumpster.

Then I drove over To the special waste recycling place in Rogers and dropped off 5 gallons of used coolant. Then over to the metal recyclers to drop off the metal, notching $36 and change, I think it was. Not quite worth the effort expended in gathering up offloading the metal at the recycler, but something that needs to be done anyway, so A bonus that I at least get to make money off of the waste metal. 🎉

It was while I was waiting at the metal recycler that I got a phone call from WT equipment letting me know that they had already resealed the hydraulic cylinder rods that I had dropped off earlier. And he guess is on the price?

Grand total of $84 and change. 🥳

The guy said it took 30 minutes to do both of them, and so that’s what he charged me for.

Very grateful. 😊

As both a mechanic and a business owner, I understand Dad you charge for the time it takes you to do things, for the training that it took to get to where you are, for the tools that it takes to do the job, for the supplies that it takes to do the job, etc, etc

I would have been totally fine if he charged me 1 hour even with it only taking 30 minutes. As a business owner, I understand that it makes sense to have a 1-hour minimum because it’s not just a half hour of Labor that you’re dealing with when you do a job and it only takes a half hour of Labor time. There’s billing and intake and delivery and accounting and on and on.

I would have considered being charged an hour fair, but they went above and beyond, in my view, only charging me for the actual labor time that it took.

Awesome. 🥳

Thank you, WT Equipment.

This whole ordeal with the skid steer has been a pain in the butt and super stressful, and that was a nice bright spot. 😊

After getting home again, I headed up to work on the skid steer, but met Liz driving away with a sick puppy. I jumped on justanswer.com to use my own membership to get in touch with a veterinarian in the hopes that maybe we could save her some money, but the conclusion by the online vet was to have her take the dog in. 😕

That was the same conclusion my friend Robyn’s vet came up with as well after seeing the pictures.

Oh well, we tried.

I spent most of the rest of the evening working on the skid steer, getting it put back together. It wasn’t easy. And that’s an understatement, haha. One of the cylinders was super hard To get back in to the cylinder. It’s funny that it was the opposite, unless the people at WT equipment accidentally put the one rod into the other cylinder.

Either way, gratefully, after a fair bit of effort, I was able to get both of the cylinders put back together and installed. All that’s left is to grease everything, clean off all the hydraulic fluid that leaked everywhere so that I don’t have a fire, and… get back to work. 🙃

I got back to the house pretty late, but Thomas had Rover loaded up with a bunch of his stuff, and my mom needed a bunch of her stuff that was too heavy for her to carry taken out to it. So Thomas and I carried stuff out for my mom and loaded it up, and then we all drove over to the storage units to drop off what we had loaded up.

After getting home, I ate a little bit of dinner, and then I started working on JustAnswer. The company is doing a bonus week for mechanics, offering an additional $8 payout per phone call that we take. Most mechanics seem not to like to take phone calls, but they are actually my favorite, so it’s a boon for me.

I’ve found that, on average, phone calls take a lot less time than the chat conversations do, the issues oftentimes are less complex.

Day two of gratitude:

• I’m grateful that I was able to get My pickup trucks bed mostly cleaned out.
• I’m grateful that I was able to burn most of the remaining branches and wood in the burn pile. The only thing that’s left is the two huge chunks of wood left over from the massive oak tree trunk. Each of the chunks is probably down to about a fifth of the size they were originally.
• I’m grateful I was able to get the metal over to the recycler, cleaning out the metal out of my truck bed, out of the metal pile at our house, and some of the metal that was by the dumpsters. It’s nice to be checking things off the list that need to be done before we leave, or at least that I would like to have done before we leave.
• I’m super grateful for WT equipment. Thank you thank you thank you thank you. 😊
• I’m grateful that I was able to get the cylinder rods back in, even the one that was giving me fits. I ended up getting a block of wood and a sledgehammer to get it pounded down inside. Hopefully everything will be okay with both of them when i fire the puppy up and get back to working with it.
• I’m grateful for the bonus period with JustAnswer. Hopefully. I’ll be able to make a fair bit during this bonus week. 🤞

Loves,

Lift the world.

~ stephen