Delivery Day

Cool loading thing we saw on the way in. That thing’s jaws reach the ends of a 40ft container… huge!

The car where he/she sits alone in the depot. Alone perhaps not the word as it was well and truly surrounded by a heap of other shipments. The depot manager seemed capable and wasn’t fazed by removing and packing the roof rack. I drove the last ~50KM in 4th gear trying to chew through fuel as it’s only permitted to have 25% max. One tank was empty, but one tank had maybe 30% in it, so I hope they do the maths across both tanks, not individually.

Cassie has been quite sad most of today… not crying, but wouldn’t be far from it… almost like she doesn’t think we’ll see it again. It’s only a car, and thankfully I have not been struck by the same sensation. I could be a bit slower emotionally and it may sink in over a few days.

I have some video to add, but it’s side-tracked by new developments below.

Update: Cassie’s just received an email from the shipping broker requesting the ‘dangerous goods’ inspection form by 10am tomorrow. The car was due for inspection tomorrow, but just some time.
Lets get the worrying out of the way:
-Inspector doesn’t deliver form by new unrealistic deadline posed by shipping company
-We miss this sailing, forfeit potentially ~$700 in accommodation as we’ll be a week late.
-Unknown costs associated with rebooking air tickets
-Untold inconvenience with visa timings

Now that all that worry is out of the way, we can only hope that we’ve sweet talked the inspector and he gets all the paperwork done on time and our sailing date stays intact. Cassie will no doubt go into this in more detail, but there is around 5 people/companies we depend on to facilitate this project…. none of which will talk to one another, they all just go through Cassie who has enough on her plate.
 
I’m trying to think of an alternate example – lets try this one:
You’re buying a new European car. You pay the dealer, then a separate cheque to the manufacturer. Oh, you’ll need to register it yourself, plus CTP, and organise customs clearance. You’ll also need to coordinate a sailing schedule with the truck that brings it down from Sydney. You meet the truck in a dusty warehouse and pull all the plastic off it yourself.
In NO WAY would that be an appropriate level of interaction in the process of buying the car.
Perhaps I have oversimplified it, but we went to one vendor to get our car to it’s destination… yet we’re the ones doing all the running around with now 5 stakeholders. It should not be this hard.

Anyway, my rant is done. What was an awesome and exciting day could turn into a real cockfight tomorrow.