Posts Tagged ‘San Rafael’

We arrived shortly after dawn and put the logs in place ready to be dragged into place as a base for the container

Logs ready to be dragged into position under the container

Everyone was in place when Gustavo’s lorry arrived and it stopped on the earth road just outside our farm entrance. I backed the pickup  up to the rear of the lorry so we could use it as an unloading platform for a few of the fragile items.

Ready to remove delicate items

The customs seal on the container door defeated us as we had not realised it had a core of steel! No one had a cutter with them, but finally brute force and ignorance won the day and we removed the seal.

Removing the Custom's Seal

It was with some trepidation that we opened the doors as we did not know how well the contents had fared. But DHL Felixstowe had done a brilliant job packing it. Everything was still secure when we opened the first door.

Opening the door after many weeks

The TV, PC and a few delicate items were unloaded onto the pickup to safeguard them against possible damage when we took the container off the lorry.

Whilst this was going on, other neighbours came by on their tractor and teased us that theywere going to call the police and complain about us blocking the road!

"Oy, move that lorry!"

Hector backed his lorry up, and then unexpected problems started…

His lorry’s bed was much lower than Gustavo’s lorry’s bed and the earth road was not very level. This was cured by shunting the lorries around and putting bricks under one of Hector’s wheels until the lorry beds were as level as we could make them.

Then we discovered that we could not get the lorry jacks under the container to lift it up and the one that did fit under was not man enough to lift up one corner of the container onto the pipes.
Panic!! We were stuck.
Hector mentioned that there might be a fork lift at a small alfalfa pellet production plant that could help, so we all jumped into the pickup and headed off to the pellet making plant (leaving the road blocked!!).

Alfalfa Pellet Plant

When we arrived at the pellet plant it was incredible. We explained the problem to the plant manager, Sergio, and he took on the solution to our problem as though it was his own!
He could not release a forklift as it was in use constantly. But Sergio had a couple of manually operated  hydraulic lifts that we could borrow. But he not only loaded them onto his own pickup, he came back with us to the farm to help too!
His lifters were only rated at about a ton and a half, so we had to be careful not to overload them as the container weighed just under 5 tons.

One of Sergio's Hydraulic Lifters

The other one

But, we could not get the lifters under the container either!

Can't get the lifter underneath

So in the next series of pictures you can see levers and different sized wooden blocks being used to MANUALLY  lift each corner of the container in turn an inch in order that we could get the hydraulic lifters (and thence the pipe rollers) underneath.

"All together now...."

1 corner done...

1 roller underneath now

Now to lift the next corner

1 hydraulic lifter in place and container on wooden blocks

Lifting the final corner up onto wooden blocks

Final roller about to be slid underneath

Everyone pitched in to help and everyone was extremely practical too. The other neighbours came past and teased us yet again about the road!

Our hearts were in our mouths once we got the container onto the rollers as it slid a few inches sideways off the lorry bed and it would only have needed a slight touch to push it off onto the ground.

Getting Hector's lorry bed level with Gustavo's again

There were many problems that cropped up as we progressed, and every single one was dealt with simply and efficiently by the people helping us. For example, although the lorry beds were now level again, as the container moved onto Hector’s lorry the suspension compressed more than Sergio’s and the beds were no longer level.  No fuss was made, they just got on and dealt with any problem and with only the most basic of tools. That, for me, is what ‘team work’ is all about.

The container was rolled onto Hector’s lorry in a fairly controlled fashion and with lots of crossed fingers that it would not fall off. (Once on Hector’s lorry it was noted that the container was a lot longer than the lorry which made life interesting later on as the front wheels were almost off the ground).

Nearly all onto the tipping lorry now

After over two hours of hot, hard work the container was secured onto Hector’s lorry and the saga of the container’s journey to its final resting place starts.

Gustavo and his lorry left, their job done.

Gustavo departs for work

Our neighbour’s son, Hector, had a small tipping lorry and he was willing to help us with the container. Hector also delayed his normal work of transporting firewood and charcoal so that he could be available when we needed him.

In order to move the container we now planned to lift it 4 inches up off the bed of the large container lorry with jacks used to change lorry tyres, and then put rollers underneath the container, and gently pull it off onto Hector’s lorry. He would then take it to our planned spot and gently tip it off in a controlled fashion.

For the rollers we needed something very strong, but light enough to be able to manhandle into place and which would have at least a 4 inch diameter to keep the container base above the lorry’s twistlocks.

Gustavo has suggested that we use “Petroleum pipes”, so late in the evening of the 5th we drove to a company that supplies oil well drillers with drilling equipment to see if they could help us out.

In the oil drilling company's yard

They promptly cut one of their oil well drilling pipes into container width sized pieces, which we loaded  into the back of the pickup and headed for town.

Our "Rollers"

We then telephoned Hector to confirm that tomorrow was the day at last and we would need his tipping lorry first thing in the morning.

As the farm is flood irrigated we did not want the container to be put directly onto the earth so we had bought 10 wooden logs 20 cm in diameter to act as a base. These we graded according to size (so the container would sit level) and we numbered them.

That night we loaded the pipes and logs ready for an early morning start.

Ready for an early start

We  had been phoning our agent in Buenos Aires (Hiperbaires) since mid December to see what was happening with the container. The last we had heard was that it was going to arrive on Thursday 6th January and we had made arrangements for that day. You can imagine our surprise when we phoned  Buenos Aires on the 5th to to be told that the lorry and container had finally been released by Customs, examined by Customs Police and was on its way to the farm a day early.

To make matters worse, Hiperbaires had originally contracted to supply us with a tipping lorry so that we could unload it on the farm. Now the lorry was not a tipper and the container had to be pulled off somehow. All our preparations had just been thrown out of the window.

Graciela talked to the lorry driver on his mobile phone to discuss arrival time and the size of his lorry. He was already on his way, so we agreed with Gustavo (the lorry driver) that our container could stay overnight outside his house as we were not ready to receive it and unload it on the farm a day early.

Our container stayed over night outside the lorry driver's house

It was nice to see our container at last,  but our problems increased when the driver told us that we could not slide or pull the container off his lorry as it had twist locks (that held the container in place) and these were not retractable or removable. Our plan had been to drag the container off his lorry.

Now that was not possible and we needed to lift it off vertically. This was not something that we had planned for and, earlier in December we had totally discounted hiring a mobile crane to lift the container off of the lorry.
(The local mobile crane company, called Martinelli, had quoted us a price that we thought was far too high, and on top of that they could not even guarantee that the crane would be available on the day and time we planned. That was no good to us).

So, how do you lift a 20 foot container off a lorry with no crane, take it across a farm with no roads, cross a wide and deep irrigation ditch and put it down just where you want it with no specialist equipment to hand? Sounds like a corporate team build event!! But no, this is real life, and we have to solve the problem in the next 12 hours as the container could not stay on Gustavo’s lorry as he needed it for work.