The most recent.
I get a great price on some used Strong Hold cabinets. If you're not familiar with them, they're advertised as the strongest cabinets you can buy. They're made in Wisconsin out of 12 gauge steel. They're rated to carry 1900 pounds per shelf. The ones I got are equipped for both shelving and plastic bins. They'll last forever. They weigh 760 pounds each.
So I win the Ebay auction, and the cabinets are 30 miles from my house. Genius that I am, I work out that U-Haul is going to cost me over a hundred bucks, but the local Home Depot (where I also want to buy an air compressor) will rent you their truck for $19 for 75 minutes and $10 an hour thereafter. I'm smart, so I go to Home Depot, get them to take my 20% Harbor Freight coupon on the compressor, have them load it up, figure out how to get the thing down off the 40"-high bed to my driveway, and then go to pick up the big cabinets.
When you're smart, the world is your oyster -- so it's no surprise that the place I'm buying the cabinets from waives their normal forklift fee. Pretty soon, I'm off and on my way home.
Okay, now I've got to figure out how to get these things 40" down and then up my driveway and back into my garage. They're heavy, and I'm doing this solo. But you know me -- I'm
smart. So with a cheap come-along and a length of rope and some steel pieces to make a ramp, I actually dance these things around and down off the truck without breaking any bones or making loud noises. The key to lifting something heavy is to never have to lift it. I use a furniture dolly to move them along the driveway. Since they're made to be moved with a forklift, I flip them on their tops and leave them standing that way. I take the truck back and no one at Home Depot is the wiser about what I used it for.
Now, I've made the point about what a smart guy I am, right? But I'm no body builder. So let me make the point about how heavy and unwieldy these things are for a 160-pound weakling like me to move around. They're
really freakin' heavy, even after a smart guy like me takes out the shelves and takes off the 85-pounds-each doors.
And I've got some clever ideas about how I'm going to never actually have to lift one of these as I move it, and that all I need are levers and wheels and some rope and a way to control something falling down and I could build the pyramids if I had to.
Can you see a fender and a headlight behind that one cabinet? That's my pride and joy -- my vintage race car:
I was raised by a smart father, so I'm good about always having an out -- that if I have to suddenly let go, the thing will fall to the ground and not under any circumstances on top of me.
Off I go. The next step is to get the cabinets down on their sides so I can cut their feet off.
Did I mention how smart I am? Did I? Even though I've parked my race car right behind them in the driveway, I've got it worked where I'll be able to slowly lower the first one down and be able to react if it slides in one direction or the other and be able to control it, more or less, as it goes down to rest on its side.
And now it's lowering, and it does slide a little. My driveway's not all perfectly even, and the big cabinet moves over a few feet as it lowers down.
And it's heavy -- heavier with each inch it lowers, since it's tilting, and I see that I'm going to have to hit the eject button, probably, and let it come down onto the cushiony stuff I've thought to put underneath it.
Not my best-case scenario, but still within what I foresaw as possible.
And then I see how smart I was to have the other bench be sitting between this one and the race car. If everything goes to hell, as it seems to be doing, now, the lowering bench will hit the other bench. Maybe a 'boom,' but no harm no foul. These things don't dent.
And it does. Kind of in slow motion, and kind of under control. 'Boom.' A low, booming kind of sound.
And that's fine. The cabinet is down on the ground, now.
But the part I didn't count on was what would happen when I let first cabinet impact the other, which was still standing on its head -- still a little, uh, top heavy.
It's like I'm seeing dominoes. But with big, heavy, Strong Hold cabinets as the dominoes.
And my race car was parked right there, behind the second domino.
Genius, like I said.
There was a moment where time stretched out. I saw the big cabinet tilting, starting to go. Then tipping. It moved really slow. Then I saw the front of the Porsche, right behind it. And in my mind, the figure of 760 pounds flashed like a neon sign. And I watched as the big thing fell back, blocking my view of the race car...
...making a really loud noise as it came down on the front of my car.
Boom.
'Oh... my... god...'
I just dropped a 760-pound weight on my race car.
(Because I'm so smart.)
It's one of those moments where you don't feel so great about yourself.
As it happened, I was really,
really lucky. It came down on the front fender of the car, which is raised up above the hood. It broke the headlight lens, and bent the trim ring that goes around the headlight. But the fiberglass fender flexed and returned to its original shape when I got the big cabinet off of it a few minutes later. The paint got some light scratches, but it's a track car. It's got loads of stone chips already. As it happens, I had a spare lens and trim ring in the garage. In the end, I wasn't out anything for the repair. And the very light cracks in the clear coat of the paint will function as a good reminder of what a 'really smart' guy I am for years to come.
I got the cabinets in place later that day. This photo is from before they were cleaned up and re-painted.
I promise I will never attempt to move them again. Because -- smart as I might be -- I am not smart enough for that.
I'm lucky I still have a hood, fender, windshield and bumper. Fiberglass has pretty good memory, it turns out. I'll try to remember just how stupid it is not to move the race car out of the driveway the next time I decide to show off what a genius mover I am.
(I am Stupid)
