Supply Chain Blues, Con’t

When I worked in the corporate world, people used to say, “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”  Occasionally, a really pissed off secretary or Lady Lawyer would say, “If you want something done well, give it to a busy woman”.  The idea was that, if someone wasn’t busy, that was because nobody wanted to work with them and that, in turn, was because their work product was crap.

(People also said that partner track at big law firms is an ice cream eating contest, where the prize is…more ice cream.  That’s why Andrew Yang quit after six months.)

After I got off the phone with the sales rep at the home factory, my email farted.  The hauler who the factory wanted me to use was a business based near one of my parks with whom I am quite familiar.  There is a reason why they have time to take the factory’s orders while all of their competitors are busy.  They are not busy people.

I first encountered these haulers during the Obama administration.  I needed a home that I had bought out of another park moved to mine.  I hired them because they were the only transporters who had the time to return my calls.  I also bought three used homes from them and asked them to move them to my park and install them.  Here’s what they screwed up:

• They almost snapped the frame of the first home they moved;

• They installed a double-wide too far from the applicable gas meter for us to get a C. of O.;

• They installed a home backwards;

• They ran over a leach field; and,

• They bent the frame of a home by attaching a chain to it mid-home and pulling it sideways to sit it on a pad.

The last was discovered recently.  The home whose frame they mangled belonged to the people who are buying the new home that needs to be delivered.  Another guy moved that home to another empty pad in the park recently, to make room for the new home.  That’s the pad that was poured yesterday, whose cement is curing now.  The problem had remained hidden so long as the home sat on the old lot, skirted.  The guy who moved it told me he had a hell of a time getting it off the old pad and onto the new pad without breaking it, because of the damage that had been done to its frame.  When I told him who I had bought the home from, he snickered and said, “One of their jobs, huh.”  I said,

“He should have autographed that part of the I-beam that he mangled.”

“Hah, hah.”

“You can’t make this shit up.”

I told the person who coordinates transport at the factory that I did not want to work with those people.  She said, “I will do my best to try and schedule as requested however I can not make any promises we only have 2 haulers at this time and are struggling with shipping”.  I suggest they struggle harder.  We have a contract and they should honor it.

Keynes said something like, “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”.  There is something in there about incompetent service providers who move massive pieces of metal on public highways.  Maybe, “The idiots can remain incompetent longer than you can remain insured?”  “Incompetence never sleeps”?  “Entropy conquers all?”  “Fast, cheap and out-of-control built this country”?  Readers are encouraged to send in their suggestions.