Wings: Wing kit arrived!

The wing kit came today from Old Dominion.  Final freight charge applied to me was $233.35, which included liftgate service, a $25 add-on, plus a $15 residential fee.  Scheduled delivery was for between 1400 and 1800.  But Dave, the driver, called at 1015 asking if he could come early since he was ahead of schedule.  Glad I decided to play it safe and not hit the gym this morning.

There are two wings in there.

Dave and I used the palette jack to pull out the skins crate onto the liftgate, then we lifted the spar crate and placed it on top of the skins crate. We lowered everything down on the liftgate, then rolled it down the sidewalk.  Finally, we lifted the crates into the back yard.  

In comes the truck.

 

Pushing the crates down the sidewalk. 

 

Lifting the crates into the back yard.

Crates are waiting until I can get some help to move them into the basement.

My friend helped me get the crates into the basement.  We had to remove the window pane from the egress window, which is a bit of a Tetris game.  But once that was complete, the house easily swallowed its new meal.

 

In goes the spar crate and then the skins crate.

 

And here's what the other side of that process looked like.

I can't believe how well Van's packed these crates.  During inventory, I was utterly amazed at the way they fit everything together.  Very little wasted space.  They must have a packaging expert on hand.  It's really remarkable.

 

Crate lids removed.

Inventorying.

So, after agonizing for hours over how to get these crates off the truck and into the house, turns out it wasn't very difficult.  The crates are easily lifted by two people and could be pushed or dragged by a single person too.  Most people probably don't need to bring their crates into the basement through an egress window.  That was the most difficult part of the ordeal.  Now, I'm not looking forward to moving the shop and its contents from the basement to the future new home.

Van's sent a letter dated 5-Apr-13 (Friday) saying the wing kit was shipped that day.  That letter arrived Tuesday, the 8th.  The shipping company beat the letter and called me Monday afternoon to schedule delivery as it was already at the dock.  Guess that truck was rolling over the weekend!  In any case, why Van's doesn't fire off an email in lieu of a letter is odd.  Perhaps their IT infrastructure doesn't support such.