Hauling Secrets

Probably some of my favorite aspects about hauling are the images we get to see daily that typical jobs just don’t allow their employees to see. Above is what I like to call the flight of the dump birds. All those tiny black things are actually birds and represent only about a third of the birds that hang out at the dump, picking at the loose garbage. When you drive up to dump there seem to be a wall of tiny black birds just watching you go about your day, kind of creepy sometimes.

Some of you may be confused as to exactly what it means to be a hauler. I have a prime example of the work that we do as haulers, presented in words and pictures from a garage cleanout Smidge and I did today.

As haulers we take this:

And turn it into this:

It is all too common for us to open a client’s garage and be greeted with a sight like what you see in that first picture. However something very uncommon was lurking under this particular pile of garage garbage. Something nasty. Something foul beyond words. Something… dead.

Buried under the debris toward the front of the garage was a bucket filled with a mysterious black liquid. Now, liquids are one of the only things we are not licensed to haul in our truck, so Smidge took the bucket to the side of the driveway to empty it.

Bad idea.

These poor bastards took shelter in the wrong garage. Little did they know they were stumbling into the den of a sadistic serial mouse killer. Why would you drown mice in a bucket of water? More importantly, WHY WOULD YOU LET SAID BUCKET OF DEATH WATER FESTER IN YOUR GARAGE FOR THE OBLIVIOUS HAULERS TO STUMBLE ACROSS??

I was going to throw in one more picture of an inexplicable advertisement we found at the same job, but it’s late and I’m tired so it’ll have to wait til tomorrow.

At the end of the other day the sky looked like this.

Its strange to say but undeniable once said, we all have a style of hauling. (I admit I exemplify the more awkward style of hauling.) But style exists independent of how good a hauler you are.

It can all be thought about much like the hip-hop sense of “flow”. Some artists have awkward flow, like Biz Markie or Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but that does not mean they have any less “street cred”. People who enjoy ODB can certainly enjoy Jay-Z, who has immaculate flow. On to my example of my awkward hauling flow.

One of the more disgusting items I hauled the other day was a mattress that looked like it was made of fur. Upon seeing the fur I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t I scrape off the fur before lifting this? It will get everywhere.” Then I paused. Then thought, “Nah! I’ll just try to carry it slowly as to not disturb the fur.” And as you can imagine my well intentioned plan backfired when cat hair went everywhere: the floor, the walls, my clothes, in my mouth. It reminded me much of the infamous “I’ll break the large pane of glass to make it more manageable” incident of 2006. Such is a minor incident of my awkward awkward style.

I debated for a while what I should write as my inagural post to this blog. Since Smidge decided to have a little fun at my expense with his first post, I figured it would only be fair for me to return the favor.

When I first started working as a hauler I thought that a fair amount of our customers would be the attractive “desperate housewive” type, but nothing could be further from the truth. We do a lot of work for contractors, realtors and old couples; but rarely any attractive females. Therefore when we DO encounter a beautiful woman it sometimes throws us off our game a bit.

On this particular day Smidge and I arrived at the jobsite and knocked on the front door, only to have our socks knocked off by the beautiful being that opened the door. She was a goddess: long dark hair, perfect figure, and the kind of smile that would melt the heart of a serial killer. In a nutshell, this woman was DROP DEAD GORGEOUS.

Before I go any further I need to mention our “sales routine”. We have a price sheet that we carry around on a clipboard, and before each job one of the two crewmembers is designated as “salesman” for that particular job. The salesman carries the clipboard, explains the prices and does most of the interacting with the customer.

Thankfully Smidge was holding the clipboard for this job, because when this vixen opened the door I temporarily forgot how to speak English. Luckily for both of us Smidge recovered rather well. He quoted the job and she agreed to have us remove her unwanted items. It was a typical job: a couch, a few matresses and a bag or two of household items. After doing the work Smidge walked up to her to see if she had anything else she wanted to get rid of.

What followed was the mother of all Freudian slips: “Is there anything else you’d like us to do to you?”

Silence.

Smidge turns bright red. “Er, FOR you, anything else we can do FOR you?” By this point my back was turned and I was walking back to the truck. I managed to cork my laughter until I was out of earshot, but barely made it in the truck before I couldn’t contain myself. I laughed HARD, I laughed until I cried, and I never let him hear the end of it.