Wednesday 3 January 2018

Dog food delivery day -

Well what a fecking palaver! I get a call from the very pleasant driver to say he's on his way and will be with me at 12.30pm. I'm prepared and waiting and he rings and informs me that his wagon is too big to come up the track. So I tell him, "but they know not to send a big wagon, we've been buying this food for about 10 years!" Anyway he says no worries I have a forklift and will bring the pallet up on that. I wait .. and wait .. and wait. The drive comes walking up the track and tells me he's got the forklift suck on the track and can we drive the van down and carry the food up in the van .. 50 bags of it, 50 x 15kg bags! After going down for the first lot, I'm only willing to carry about 14 at a time, another delivery van comes up the track and is then stuck behind the forklift! Thankfully he was a very very nice man and both vehicles were reversed down the track and the food loaded onto the second carriers van and he brought it up here.
Fourteen  bags were taken off the pallet, loaded into the van and then unloaded again at home and carried to the shed. Thankfully the others went straight on the pallet into the delivery van and only had to be unloaded and carried across the yard to the shed here. But with three varieties of food then came the next cock up at a Tripe food was buried under a pile of the adult food, so that had to be moved again or it would be impossible to find it later. I gave the van driver a small token of our appreciation, well what could I do? What would we have done without him?  I'm not sure I can blame the wagon driver either? Can I?
All I can say is we have been buying food from CSJ for about 10 years. This has happened once before and I've a feeling it may be the same driver as others have without doubt been up here in that huge wagon. The driver admitted that on CSJ's delivery note it said .. small wagon. So why did the delivery company send it out in this huge thing? God only knows, I guess the blame lies with them. Today I'm aching, but I'll get by .. someone else can hardly move!
So why do I do it this way? Well three reasons, one logically is cost. There is a huge discount and no delivery charge on a pallet of 50 or more. Another is safety over Winter, nothing worse than being snowed in and running out of dog food, I know I've pushed a bag in a wheel barrow up those hills .. and of course convenience, well usually anyway, though yesterday has left me doubtful but now I do have about 9 months worth of food for 8 dogs safely locked in the shed!