Rocky and Putzy

Becoming pump/truck owners was a long, slow, drawn-out process, and I'm not talking about the years of insanely hardwork that Joe has put in with his Shotcrete business, I'm just talking about the waiting after we committed to buying it. I think we ordered the pump in June last year, paid for the truck in November, and now right at the end of Feb, we finally have them both on our driveway.....just!

As soon as he brought the truck in the driveway for the first time, we could see that with about 10 cm on either side of the truck to the fence it was going to be a REALLY tight squeeze. And that was without the pump (which is like a big trailer) on the back.

So a couple of weekends ago we were in full on Project Tree Removal mode. Any inch of space we can get at the moment is an inch that we need. He even had to change our front steps a bit this week so there's a tiny bit more space at the front door. Our next project will be to do quite a bit of concreting down the driveway and at the back of the garage....lucky I know of some hardworking, cheap concrete labour!

Excuse the butt, but I had to take a pic of Dalls watching them go to the dump with all the branches

Meet Putzy, our flash new TK60 HP

My poor baby had to tow her in!

Monday 29th Feb, the first meeting of Rocky and Putzy. Not ideal to be sorting all this out at 7:30am on a work morning but I could understand why he was so excited to get it all hooked up. I don't think in this house he'll ever be able to do it without me being there to direct him.

Training session with Don from Concrete Pumping NZ on Wednesday afternoon. He was such a good sport to do it all with the kids coming in and out, all up in his business. Lucky he's used to having grandkids around

Before he flew home, he came over one last time incase Joe had any questions and assured him that he's only at the end of the phone if there's any worries later on

1st outing.... a drive into the city and past a job in Mission Bay. Apparently lots of contractors were loving the new rig, staring and giving Joe the thumbs up!

So now Joe's got to figure out how to get it in and out of the driveway. He's tried reversing it out about 10 times and only had success once. So we'll have to keep having reversing practise in the evenings!

And as I type this he's out there tinkering around, building a shelf for reducers and clamps so they don't roll around in the toolbox. And I've got to mention that the compressor came red and he's already had that changed to black at the Panelbeaters, and one afternoon this week I came home to a big spray painting party cause he didn't like the red reducers, so now they're white and the orange clamps are black. This guy is gonna have the best looking and performing rig around that's for sure!