06-17-2023, 04:19 AM
Today we went to a local purveyor of livestock / fencing supplies and purchased a quantity of T posts. We paid extra (about $100 total) for ones made in the USA.
We got the usual mediocre service we're used to as they loaded them up, and then enjoyed stopping off at SiSi Tacos on the way home and had an amazing lunch. But I digress.
After getting home I unloaded the posts and carried them, by hand, almost half way to the job site. The next 1/2 required some squirming through the forest so I busted them out of their 5x bundled nature and upon feeling their heft realized I got the cheap Chinese posts I was trying to avoid.
I had to carry all the posts back to the truck and reload them, and then drive them back to the store to exchange them. What I was most pissed about, was that I failed to recognize them as junk posts when they were loading them, as I unloaded them, and then carried them close to where they needed to be installed.
I have more days behind me than I have ahead of me, and the wear and tear on my body carrying these fcking posts back and forth is what irritated me the most. They were supposed to be a one-way trip, not taken back, exchanged, and hauled out again at 3x the wear and tear on my arms, shoulders, and back.
USA posts are usually made out of recycled railroad rails out of a hardened steel engineered to endure thousands of tons of weight per square inch. They are normally stamped with something like "1.33 USA". (1.33 pounds per foot, meaning how much it weighs). Chinese posts are made out of the cheapest steel their foundries can produce, feel flimsy, and are usually super shiny meaning something about the galvanization is different. Somehow, I missed all these warning signs.
Don't be a terracore. Check the posts before they load them.
I don't think the store was trying to swindle us or anything, it was just a bunch of honest mistakes, of which I was a part of for not noticing sooner. But it will never happen again.
We got the usual mediocre service we're used to as they loaded them up, and then enjoyed stopping off at SiSi Tacos on the way home and had an amazing lunch. But I digress.
After getting home I unloaded the posts and carried them, by hand, almost half way to the job site. The next 1/2 required some squirming through the forest so I busted them out of their 5x bundled nature and upon feeling their heft realized I got the cheap Chinese posts I was trying to avoid.
I had to carry all the posts back to the truck and reload them, and then drive them back to the store to exchange them. What I was most pissed about, was that I failed to recognize them as junk posts when they were loading them, as I unloaded them, and then carried them close to where they needed to be installed.
I have more days behind me than I have ahead of me, and the wear and tear on my body carrying these fcking posts back and forth is what irritated me the most. They were supposed to be a one-way trip, not taken back, exchanged, and hauled out again at 3x the wear and tear on my arms, shoulders, and back.
USA posts are usually made out of recycled railroad rails out of a hardened steel engineered to endure thousands of tons of weight per square inch. They are normally stamped with something like "1.33 USA". (1.33 pounds per foot, meaning how much it weighs). Chinese posts are made out of the cheapest steel their foundries can produce, feel flimsy, and are usually super shiny meaning something about the galvanization is different. Somehow, I missed all these warning signs.
Don't be a terracore. Check the posts before they load them.
I don't think the store was trying to swindle us or anything, it was just a bunch of honest mistakes, of which I was a part of for not noticing sooner. But it will never happen again.
