The Truck I Want So Bad...

Today I was going through pictures on our computer, and I came across some pictures from a lawn maintenance job that I did a few years ago, which involved a truck that I would really like to have.



Here is a picture of the hedge that we had to trim from about 9'-10' tall, down to 3 1/2' tall. Needless to say, there was an immense amount of branches left in one huge/long pile, running the entire length of the hedge. Luke VonHolten and I were trimming branches, while Joseph hauled them in the trailer of the lawn tractor. As the end of the afternoon was approaching, I told Joseph to stop hauling, and help trim, so that we could make sure that we at least got all of the bushes trimmed by dark. Well, we got the hedge trimmed, and it was just barely getting dark, so we went back to the tractor, to start hauling... It wouldn't start... Bummer!

I asked the owner of the place if we could use his blue truck to haul the branches. He said we could, but he didn't know if it'd start or not because he hadn't used it in a long time.


I went out to the truck and started cranking the engine. I cranked... And I cranked... Until all of a sudden it started to fire intermittently. This is when I realized how much fun this truck was going to be to drive! When it finally got to the point that it could stay running on it's own, I had to keep the gas pedal all the way to the floor so that it wouldn't die. Amidst the noisy rumble of the engine, and the great clouds of smoke being emitted from the back of the truck, Luke VonHolten and Joseph looked on with some of the biggest grins I've ever seen. It reminded me of a scene from the movie "The Flight of the Phoenix". Eventually I was able to take my foot off the gas pedal, and it had a beautiful sounding idle. I put it in gear and it died. For some reason Luke and Joseph found this hilarious. Grateful that I wasn't limited to five cartridges, I started it back up and helped it out a little with some throttle. To make a long story short, we started hauling branches in the back of the pickup, but it wasn't all to fast so Luke suggested the plow. At first I said no, but then I decided we'd give it a try. By now it was dark and we were working by the light of the headlights. There was one problem here, when we started using the plow it blocked the headlights so I couldn't see where I was going. So Luke climbed on the top of the cab to give me directions. It worked beautifully. With Luke on top shouting directions, the pile soon started rolling up like a big snowball, and before long we were pushing a huge-dense roll of branches (possibly twice the height of the truck) towards the fire pit.



I don't think I've ever cleaned up so many bushes so fast, or had so much fun doing it.