My friend had a similar experience one day,when we went to Home Depot and bought 2 full cases of 8 foot fluorescent light tubes ,to replace all the dead and flickering ones in his shop...
He had a old '73 Dodge Power wagon at the time,and he just put the cases in the bed,and he had a tool box in the bed up front,so they wouldn't lay flat--so he propped them up with a cardboard box and left the last foot or so sticking up over the tailgate..
"It's only a couple miles to the shop--it'll be fine"..
Famous last words!..
First time we got to an open stretch of road and got it up to about 40 mph,I heard something--he looks in the rear view mirror,and I spun my head around and looked out the back window,and we both said "OH S***T at the same time,as the two boxes with at least a dozen tubes flew up about 20 feet in the air,and crashed to the pavement and made a loud explosion,and clouds of white dust came out of them..
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Luckily no cars were behind us..he pulls over and says "Should we go back there "?..
.I shook my head,and said "If I were you,I'd just floor it and keep going"...he did...we made a 180 up the street,and headed back to Home Depot,over $100 just "blew up and away"--turned out they had no more in stock,we had bought the last 2 cases,so we had to go 10 miles more to a Lowe's...this time I suggested we take my van,which could easily hold 10 foot lengths of lumber--he agreed that was a better choice to transport them..
Transporting those 8 foot bulbs suck--unless you have a full sized van..its a 50/50 chance you'll either smash them before you get home with them,or drop one ,or smack one against something while your dancing on the ladder trying to twist them into the sockets..
I have been given some "valuable scrap" before and ended up being screwed too--a local lawn mower/small engine shop where I used to buy all my parts close to my house was a large operation,and they always had at least 2-3 pickup trucks worth of scrap out back--some whole tractors people decided were going to cost too much to fix and they said "scrap it for me",and a few hundred air cooled engines..
One day the owner told me "I dont have that part your looking for listed,but I may have a good used one out back--he showed me the scrap pile and my jaw dropped--many of the things in the pile looked very repairable,and were of the same vintage as the stuff I had at home and liked working on..
He said "If you want a job,I'll let you have ALL this stuff--but no cherry picking--you must take it ALL--I have a pile like this every couple of weeks usually...I hate scrapping much of it,because I always end up needing an obsolete part off something,but the insurance regulations and the fire department doesn't want me keeping it here and letting it accumulate"..
Well,the first load I took home I kept 90% of it--then the rest I kept going back for ended up being mostly just tractor chassis stripped clean of all the "good" parts--he bought a tractor trailer body to stash the good stuff in,and only scrapped the light iron or engines that were blown up with holes in the block,etc.
I was kind of pissed,because I got maybe 20 engines that ended up being good after some tinkering in the first load,and many transmissions that had nothing wrong with them too..
I had to go home and spend a day taking off every steel bolt and part off the engines to get 35 cents a pound for the non-ferrous cases,and the light iron was only bringing about 10 cents a pound then.
After3 months I told him "sorry,I cant take the scrap any more--its simply not worth the effort to strip everything and haul it in,and get maybe 25-50 bucks for a heaping truckload"..,he said "Eh--OK,I know some other guys that'll be glad to take it"..he acted like he was miffed,as if he did me a huge favor,for hauling off only JUNK,the first load was the only one that was worth taking really..
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