I seem to be able to get into the weirdest situations…. Maybe I should stay away from ebay? lol
I recently bid on and won a two ton chain hoist and frame on ebay.
So these were the pictures showing it on ebay 🙂 It looks big but not quite as massive as it turned out to be in person.
So I won this thing for $102.00. I didn’t think I would win it as just the hoist and car on the I beam is worth many hundreds of dollars. Buzz the guy that I communicated with at the company that was selling this told me I could pick it up or if i wanted they would disasemble the frame and ship it. Shipping came to about $350.00.. OUCH!!!! ok … we’re not shipping! I figured gas from conway to atlanta round trip would run about $110.00 in my GMC astro van (gas actually ended up around $130.00) and that I could just strap the frame work to the racks on the roof. Then I remembered a past adventure were we strapped a 8ftx8ft 400 lb hot tub on the top of my van and drove back from charlotte with it (maybe I’ll tell that story another day :)….anyway maybe on the roof isn’t such a good idea….. So I borrow my friend Steve’s trailer that he hauls a golf cart around with. It is exactly 8 ft long inside the bed (this is important 🙂 remember it.)
I have a cousin, Barry, that lives in atlanta so I called him up and we now had a place to stay for the night. He lives about 20 minutes away from where I needed to pick up the chain hoist so it worked out very well. So now I have a place to stay after driving up on a sunday to pick the hoist up on a monday early afternoon. Now I need or at least would like someone to ride shotgun and maybe do some of the driving. lol … oh well thats what family is for 🙂 Mom is a champ and never complains to much when I drag her into one of my adventures when no one else is available. Maybe it’s her genes that get me into these things to start with 🙂
Driving, driving, driving…. ok we got to atlanta fine and monday about 12:30 in the afternoon show up to get the hoist. WOW…. oh my… in person this thing is massive. They have cut the legs off so it is in three pieces. You can with effort move the legs but the I beam at the top is 8 ft long about 1 ft tall and made out of 1/2 thick steel. I could barely make it move a half inch pushing it on a smooth concrete floor. I’m having visions of Steve’s trailor just crushing to the ground when we put this thing in it. With the help of several very helpfull employees and a forklift 🙂 we slowly and very very carefully get the I beam into the trailer. It is 1/2 inch shorter than the bed of the trailer.. talk about lucking out. There was lots of pulling of tape measure out and checking. The trailer actaully handled the I beam and the legs weight with no problem. I actually offered to buy it from steve after I got back because I was so impressed with how well it tracked and handled.. ( he just laughed at me and said if he ever got another one he would sell it to me. I don’t blame him… it is one of the best pulling trailers I’ve used.)
Ok ready for a few more pictures.
This pictures is of three of the guys that helped me load the hoist and me, several more helped but had to get back to work and were not around when i got the camera out to take pictures. From left to right in this picture are Bill, Alfredo and Zelalem with me on the far right.
As you can see the hoist is loaded onto the trailer and strapped down. You can see the i-beam in the floor behind us, it is a monster. I don’t think we could have gotten it on the trailer with out the forklift. We had to move it about 50 yards accross the factory floor and then down off of a loading dock to the trailer outside under the loading dock. you can see the loading dock behind the trailer in the above picture also.
Here is my mom helping put tiedowns on the hoist in the trailer.
and the next picture is the trailer behind van as we got gas and check oil, kicked tires etc… before leaving atlanta for the drive back to conway sc.
I did all the driving on the trip back. It was alot of weight behind us but the trailer was a champ and didn’t wobble once. We didn’t push the speed so everyone on the interstate pretty much passed us but once i found a speed that the van and trailer were comfortable at we just cruised at that speed.
Well steve’s trailer is still in my yard with the lift on it hopefully in the next day or two I can get steve and my brother over and we can slide it off the trailer. We have some comealongs and chain lifts to move it with so I’m not anticipating to much problems putting a sheet of plywood over the tailgate and skidding the ibeam off. The side posts have castors and two people can fairly easily balance them and roll them along on the castors.
Next up after this will be welding the frame back together and standing it back upright 🙂 tune in later for that story 🙂
scott
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