Moving on up

Pulled up to the dock. That's Larry driving it.



















Backed up the our previous method of picking up diapers.

We've moving them from big truck to smaller trailer


(oh, yes.. that's in the street in front of ours and our neighbor's house- theyLOVE us..)



And for those who haven't been intimately familiar with the evolution of our peddling diapers from our house- let me reminisce for a moment...

It all started when in a pathetic attempt to raise spare money, I was making diaper stuff and selling it on ebay for about a dollar. Larry said "people spend money on this stuff?" and I told him, yes- people do and if you have the right stuff, people spend alot of money on it. (at the time there were a few "hyena" brands that got $100 a diaper)

So.. never one to do things on a small scale-
And already familiar with the process of ordering from overseas from his last "real" job..

He ordered 900-something dozen diapers. And with my brother who had the poor misfortune of visiting that weekend, drove 5hours to the port, spent 5 hours lost, and another few hours learning to navigate the customs clearance system and then another 5 hours home. I think they were gone for 22 hours total. (My brother was less than amused)

And as they drive home with the pick up and 4x6 foot utility trailer, it started raining and they had to stop, buy tarps and tarp it...

The next morning we unwrap soggy mess and realize... in a huge novice mistake, we ordered "unbleached" diapers, expecting the american equivalent of unbleached and got... white diapers which weren't bleached, so they were a few shades off of white..

So we had 900+ dozen of diapers I didn't have any idea how to sell... and knowing we were moving in 2 years, I had a deadline to sell them. And that's probably where things morphed into our business plan- as we realized anything sells if you sell it cheap enough.

Fast forward a few months and Big Dreamer looks into getting the "right" kind of diaper- the unbleached indian diaper since those are what everyone wanted (I could go on about the chinese vs indian diapers, but.. well.. that'd be spinning off on a tangent there...)

And so we buy Indian diapers. And the minimums with that company were greater, so it was more like 2000 dozen diapers. And then we needed a bigger trailer...

Thus enters Larry's dream to purchase a landscaping/utility trailer.. And because money was tight we bought the cheapest, ugliest thing we could find. And of course.. it needed work. At 2 am the night before the trip to pick up the diapers, he was installing breaks on it.

But.. fate was not with him that trip and he hit a curb, popped a tire and the remaining tires were rubbing on the wheel well, so he turned around and headed back.

The next day he headed up to the parking lot he abandoned the trailer with with a friend he talked into going for a ride with him and replaced the tire and returned home with damaged trailer.... neither realized it was going to take as long as it did, I'm sure.

Back home, new tires, and back up to port--
And the trailer wasn't really ready to handle that much weight or highway speeds, so I think it took him 10 hours on back roads to get home. The entire time I was sure he was going to get himself killed.

And we sold the indian diapers in 2 months...So.. we repeat that process again.. this time the trailer gets a new hitch and the order gets bigger. And this time Larry brings a different friend along (again, someone who had no idea what they were getting into)

And each time the trailer would return, we'd empty out it's contents and try to sort and organize them back into it as it doubled as a storage unit (and we also ended up renting a storage unit..)

So.. fast forward.. the trailer (the big ugly one) has gotten more work and moved us to CA.. And while our hillbilly/redneck trailer wasn't pretty, it wasn't AS out of place as it is here.

And our first trip to pick up a shipment from port was from LA. Now.. I don't drive to LA unless there is a very good reason. Much less with a 20 foot trailer. But that's what we did and on the way home... we lost our tire.

And that last time I went with Larry and I said- ya know, this would go much much faster and easier if we could just pull up to the dock like the "normal" people. Instead they'd forlift the pallets to us and we'd have to carry each package/box into the trailer and stack it. It took some long, sweaty and dirty hours our way.. I guess on the east coast the dock hands had been willing to help load the stuff. Not here. They just delivered the pallets to near the trailer and left.

SO.. This time I'd had enough of the something-happens-to-the-trailer's-tire adventures with every trip and decided what we needed was a rental truck. Dock hight. And a pallet Jack.

And that's what we have. And loading from warehouse into truck went smoothly but that's where smoothly ends.
In true Larry-Gina fashion, it doesn't go as well as we picture in our heads and the pallet jack gets stuck trying to get up the ramp of the trailer, so we're still manually moving everything from the rental into the ugly trailer.

And it's still a sweaty dirty job and last night as we're working on it (we got home at 8 from this adventure and THEN we started the unloading..) it rained. We live in the desert. They get like 4 inches of rain a year. And of course 1 of those came last night.

Another day in Paradise~
;-)