Moving Conex's in the winter . . . A tale of caution

 Knew I was in trouble when I saw snow in the forecast.  A few months back I agreed to help a buddy out and store a couple of Conex containers at our property on O'Malley.  Just a couple of weeks he said.  Well . . I don't mind helping out, but this was early October and this is now mid-January.  Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but . . . Anyway, Nate said that whatever he had set-up before was not going to work out and that he was going to sell the Conex's.  No biggie.  I figured I would be there to help.  He initially asked if I wanted to move them, but I declined.  I don't like driving the Red Dragon in the snow.  Anywho, fast forward to this morning.  I was to meet the guy buying the Conex's and the tow truck driver at 8:00am.  Ok, I can get up early.  Of course it is snowing gangbusters and it has snowed on and off since Saturday.  Zach and I actually shoveled on Friday and knocked down the snow a bit.  Anyway, the guy buying the Conex's shows up a little after 8.  I had started shoveling the driveway a bit by hand and got a spot cleared in front of both Conex's by the time he arrived.  He asked if he could help, I said no and I continued shoveling.  It was coming down pretty good at this point and I was making minimal progress, so I decided to bust out WALL-MT.  He does a great job of clearing a lot of snow quickly.  So I am Zooming around for about 10 minutes and the tow truck shows up.  I see the lights and the end of the driveway and think myself "he is not going to try to back in . . . is he", sure enough, he backs in and . . . gets stuck.  At first I didn't think it was going to be too bad, he was just off the driveway a bit.  But the more he tried to un-stick, the more he got stuck.  So this went on for 10 minutes and the guy buying the Conex's says "I thought I would be half way to Hope by now.  I didn't realize he was taking these containers to Hope to use at his cabin. Now I am thinking I dodged that bullet and was super glad I didn't agree to move these things!!  The tow truck driver is getting frustrated and says something about "would have been nice if the drive had been shoveled".  He wasn't being too big a dick, and I think he was just frustrated that he got stuck in the first place.  We tried to pull his truck with WALL-MT at first, but that tractor is too light.  I told him that I had a tow truck too and we may be able to use that to pull his truck out.  He said yes, get your truck, so I did.  He was pretty impressed when I pulled back the cover on the storage tent.  I am not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't that.  He immediately said that his boss was looking for another truck and that he was sure that he would want to buy this one.  I politely told him that it was not for sale.  He laughed.  We got the truck out and warmed up (which is kind of a pain to be honest) and I positioned it to pull his truck out.  Well, with the two wheel drive, it just kind of spun.  So, we hooked his winch to my bumper and I put the truck in park.  His truck then tried to winch off of mine, and it literally pulled my truck closer to his truck.  So, we decided to back my truck up . . . anchor it to a tree . . .  and then use my truck as an anchor to pull out his truck.  In the end, this set-up worked.  He was able to get unstuck and get back on the driveway.  At this point it had been an hour and a half.  So we manouever the trucks around the driveway and he backs up to the first Conex.  Now, I must preface this by saying I didn't really think the truck had a chance of moving the Conex.  Rocky and I moved the Conex back in October, but that was when everything was warm . . . and not frozen!  We even had a few freeze thaw cycles that melted snow and then turned to ice under the Conex.  So when the tow truck driver went to pull with his winch . . . nothing happened.  This went on for several minutes in the gently falling snow.  All this trouble and time wasted and nothing to show. We all agreed that these Conex's were going nowhere until spring, so we wrapped it up and they left.  

So after they leave, I clear the drive way for about an hour and beat back the snow once again.  At this point the snow is coming down pretty good and I am ready to be home.  The Red Dragon is out and warm and it is kind of a pain to back into the tent on my own.  I decide to load up the second WALL-MT and take home to thaw. I had never had BOTH of them on the truck before, so I was kind of curious on how that was going to work.  Plus the second WALL-MT's key was frozen and wouldn't turn on, so I wasn't sure how I was going to get it off once it was at the house?!  We'll long story short, I was able to get the second machine on the truck.  I got everything tied down, put the F-150 in the big tent and locked everything up.  Then I slowly drove home in the blizzard like conditions.  I made it home and only partially took out a snowbird by the bridge.  I parked in the street and then with Renee's help, backed in the driveway.  I was able to get the ramp on the Red Dragon down, got machine #1 off and had to take a heat gun to the key on machine #2.  It only took a couple of minutes and then that machine too was running and off of the trailer.  

Both machines are now thawing out in the garage and will be greased once they are fully dry.  Today was a bit of a wasted day, but at the same time a productive one.  I really needed to bring both machines home to dry out.  I probably could have picked a less snowy day, but hey, turn lemons into lemonade right!?  After the fact I thought it was funny that in my haste to get home and get the scary drive out of the way, I ended up leaving my wallet, grey phone and the $12K that the guy gave me to give to Nate for the 2 Conex's.  So in the end, I had to go back over to the property with Zach and get that stuff before we could officially call it a day.  It is always something!!