The Buildings Arrive

We ordered two 50 by 20 foot metal building kits back in the spring.  They are delivered to the job in pieces on a flatbed truck.  The delivery date was Tuesday, August 23.  We are by no means ready to erect these buildings yet and we pushed back the delivery date as far as we could (The manufacturer was willing to deliver them as early as mid-June.)  but decided to receive them now before the price of the steel went up.  The biggest challenge we faced was getting tons of steel pieces up to our land in the woods. There is no way a 50 foot flatbed semi could come up to our build site, get unloaded, and turn around.  We simply do not have a large enough flat area for such an operation.  Our only recourse was to unload the truck one quarter mile away on Orchard Lane and carry the materials up to our land parcel by parcel using smaller vehicles. We also had to unload the flatbed truck. We rented a huge all-terraine fork lift to unload the truck and used our smaller F450 truck as well as our Kubota B21 tractor outfitted with pallet forks to do this.  On the appointed day the rental company delivered the fork lift around noon.  Three hours later the truck with our building parts arrived.  We immediately got to work unloading so that we could finish before dark.  We got the truck unloaded by 7:00 PM but most of our steel was still sitting alongside Orchard Lane.  Fortunately, Orchard Lane is quite sleepy and the neighbors are understanding and there was no problem leaving it there overnight.  We weren't too worried about anyone taking it since there were few pieces that weighed less than several hundred pounds and many that were in the 1000 pound range so no one was likely to walk off with them.  On Wednesday morning we were still tired and sore from the previous day's efforts and we didn't get around to moving the steel up to our land until the afternoon.  The fork truck and tractor are slow vehicles and it takes quite a while to drive the quarter mile to the build site so this was all a time consuming process.  Also, some of the steel pieces were as long as 27 feet and could not be carried to our land on the fork trucks since the dirt track to the build site is not that wide.  These long (and heavy) pieces had to be loaded onto our F450 truck and driven up to the site and then unloaded.  All this takes some time and by the end of the second exhausting day we still did not have all the steel picked up off the road.  On Thursday our efforts continued and by the afternoon of the third day we had all the steel moved up to our land.  Our work was not yet over, however.  The pieces still had to be checked against the shipping manifold and sorted by building number.  Also, a number of the pieces were scattered around the property (in the road, for example) and had to be stacked and organized.  This process continued through Saturday, finally finishing up just as the rains from the far fringes of hurricane Irene were starting to bring some much needed rain.  So now we have our building parts.  Now we still have to finish the roads, excavate the foundations, pour the footers, etc. etc.

The rented fork lift arrives on a roll-off.

Nick spends some time practicing before the buildings arrive.

This vehicle is larger than we actually needed but it was the only thing that the rental company had available.

The truck with our building backs down Orchard Lane.

The unloading begins. 

It was a little tight for space but this was the best spot to unload.

Bit by bit we get the job done.

Once the flatbed is gone we move the pieces off Orchard Lane.
Some of the longer pieces had to be loaded onto our F450 to get to the build site.

These long boxes contain decorative trim metal and gutters.

The F450 with a load of long structural steel beams.

Nick got pretty good at driving this monster fork truck.

As dusk falls on the third day the checking and sorting of the pieces begins.

Some of the pieces temporarily ended up in the road.

We sorted the pieces by building.
Each of these piles contain the main structural beams for one of the buildings.