Well. Lots of driving today, been a long time.
I went up to Arkansas with the hopes of snagging a nice trailer. Umm....I got the idea this wasn't going to turn out too well. The address was a very old, trashy, singlewide mobile home. The house was falling apart at the seams and there was junk laying all over the place. They had already informed me the trailer wasn't there but close by.
So, they loaded the entire family up in a mini van - there was a host of them I can tell ya - I followed them up the road about 500 feet to an ever worse situation. The lady comes running out of the car: Don't get out, the dogs will bite you! Little scraggly things, albeit a lot of them, I wasn't concerned. The mobile home on this land was in even worse shape than the first place.
There were 3 junky looking trailers out there, surely none of these are it? I thought. I think back now with the pics they posted and what I saw in front of my eyes. They had carefully taken angled shots to conceal the shittiness of this trailer. It was disgusting just looking at it from the outside. I decided I would force myself to walk inside the thing since I had driven so far.
It was far worse disgusting inside. The pics they had taken - I'm looking back now - were high up. The ceiling, the cabinets on the wall. The ceiling looked good - the portion of it they showed. It was sooo bad in there. You step inside the damn thing and put your foot down on a raised hump, the toilet 20 feet away - lifted up! Wait, what? The remnants of furniture was gross. I did a quick inspection, but it was obvious before I even entered the relic that I wasn't going to give them anything for it.
If anything, they would pay me to haul that pile of useless junk out of there.
What a waste of time! Not exactly.
You see, there has been this thing in me. It has been nagging at me. If I have to go back to trucking, can I even deal with it? How am I going to handle driving all day long? You know, if you' read this blog before I got out of trucking even if temporarily, that I now despise that occupation. There's FAR more to it than just driving, but even the driving part had become loathsome.
It was actually a nice drive. Close to 300 miles round trip, up there over to Shreveport and then back to the house. It's actually this reason that I wanted to go on this trip, honestly. I had no idea if the pics would equate into a trailer that is as nice as what they showed. I did care, yes, but I learned something about me in my current state of mind.
I will despise going back to trucking, but yes, I can deal with it. It was helpful.
I wasn't particularly happy that these people had misrepresented this trailer. They had it listed at $3,500, I deem it worth $0. You would spend that much money fixing it. You would literally have to gut the entire thing, put in new flooring, bathroom, furniture - it isn't worth fixing, it's a pile of s***.
I can tell you 2 things about any future trips to see trailers. 1: they will show me pictures of the entire thing from floor to ceiling on the inside. If they won't, I will move on. 2: I won't drive more than 50, maybe 60 miles to see anything listed.
Down to Shreveport, I wanted to see the inside of this trailer. This dude showed me the receipts, the bill of sale and the title. He paid a lot of money for that thing. Amazing he knew he had just let it go and didn't really care. It served it's purpose at the time and saved him money on hotels. I guess.
It's a 2016 trailer, the cabinetry in it is beautiful, still in great condition. However. The bedroom ceiling has a leak, the flooring is soft the entire walk through the trailer from the entrance door to the rear of the bedroom. It is likely just a leak around a roof vent, that appears to be where it comes in. The roof damage - at least visibly - isn't that bad. But the entire floor would have to be replaced.
The refrigerator doesn't work - beautiful wood work on the doors - but who cares if the damn thing doesn't work? The AC unit doesn't work either. Blows hot air. Well, at least it blows! LMAO
He came down to 2 grand, he'd have to come down another $500. He definitely won't sell it for $3,500. He likely won't sell it for 2 grand, but who knows. He has had only 2 people show up and they didn't want it. I get that - walk in the thing and your feet start sinking. But the cabinetry! Beautiful! The sink and counters are also in great condition. It would be worth fixing if I could get him to come down another $500. I could fix the roof myself, I'd ask James to replace the flooring and I'd look at the ac unit. Sometimes you can figure out what is wrong with it without paying a pro I've done it.
The refrigerator? That same pro would have to look at that, I have limited knowledge of refrigerators.
Whatever. I'll contact him tomorrow. Unless he comes down on the price, I won't take it. Someone could spend 3 grand on it and come out with a trailer they could resell for 10k or more. I don't have the time or the resources for it and I have to draw a line. If I can pay people to fix it and I do minimal work, then fine, I'll take it. k
Otherwise, I'll just keep looking.
,Well, got home late. Stopped for dinner after leaving Shreveport. Nothing fancy or expensive but I was hungry for I hadn't eaten since this morning. It's almost 10:00 pm. I'll ask the dude if he'll drop his price even more, if he will I'll go get it and park it behind the shed. If not, well, I have other things to do.
Yes, the tent lady finally texted me back. Today, this afternoon actually, long after I texted her. She said she'd put the dog in the dog park and tell her brother to stop parking in front of the shed. She told me to talk to her brother and gave his number. No thank you, I want to talk to him in person. Well, he's "always there". She's a nice lady, don't get me wrong, but there are a lot of nice people that will trample over the top of you and take you for everything they can get. That isn't going to happen here and I do believe she got that message today.
I will hopefully be able to go meet with him and give him an agenda of things to do that start - immediately. Screw the walking trails, get with that tiller machine and start churning up the soil. Let's plant grass, you can do the work! I'll find out how motivated they are. She certainly doesn't seem to be, maybe the brother is different.
The family is leaving sometime next month to go to Missouri. The Florida trip was cancelled so they decided to go visit a different grandma. I didn't actually know this until tonight being asked to deal with their dog and cats. Yea, I don't mind. I'll have the place to myself. It could get a bit strange being in a house that is normally loaded with all kinds of noises, but yes.
That's the thing about driving trucks. It starts to get lonely. You start craving human interaction - whatever you can find. I don't mean sexual stuff, but even communicating with odd people becomes something better than nothing. Phones, texting, email are ok but don't replace the in-person interaction.
No idea about tomorrow until I hear back from this guy about the trailer. Except - I wasn't even over at the property today. I'll be over in the morning and checking out their tent site. Do they even have a tent? Are they trashing the place or do they keep clean? Is this dude really willing to work? What kind of attitude does he have? It'll be an adventure, lol.
Enough. Getting late.