YOU HAD A BAD DAY

[Jerry W.]

What was your January 1, 2016 like?  Well let me tell you about mine.  At the end of the year I had a little spare cash sitting around but I knew that I needed to get at least 3 houses, maybe four roofed this summer.  Then I saw an add at Menards for shingles on sale that were being discontinued.  I really wanted a certain color of them since I had done a deck and back porch in that color.  About 350 miles away I found a store that had a lot of them, so I got online and ordered 50 squares plus roof wrap, ice gard, plastic cap nails, roofing nails, etc.  Well that is a lot of weight so I borrowed my friends large brand new dump trailer set up to haul over 15,000 pounds of weight.  I bought an adaptor for my truck wiring, checked the brakes, checked the tires, checked the lights and headed to get it.  I had to cross the mountains and it was a bit icy.  When I got the shingles I headed back home going well below the 80 mph speed limit due to the weight.  I took a longer less steep route home.  A little over halfway home things went bad fast.  The trailer suddenly began fishtailing wildly throwing the pickup around.  By hitting the gas I could pull it in briefly but it immediate fishtailed wildly and one cannot slow down going down a long hill by constantly hitting the gas.  Eventually the side of the road seemed the best place to be but the trailer decided to take us a different direction and pulled the truck back onto the interstate so it could flip in the middle of the road.  It was an amazing ride, one I hope to never repeat.  Imagine over 3,000 shingles flung across the interstate.  Eventually multiple tow trucks righted the trailer and I and other kind passerbys threw shingles onto it and my truck.  The result of the investigation showed the ball had broken off the hitch.  The back of my truck had many jab marks knocking large dents into it.  The ball had a single weld thinner than you little fingernail.  Apparently even 2 5/16 inch balls have light duty models.  I borrowed one my friend used as the one I usually used was loaned out.  I had C class I should have had used a B class.  The chains that kept my truck tied to the 15,000 pound trailer down the long hill were amazingly strong, and never broke.  The emergency break away brake set never kicked in as the lanyard was longer than the truck safety chains.  The tow truck bills, hiring a semi to take the trailer home the next day all added up.  Since I only had liability insurance on my beautiful 22 year old truck nothing was covered, not the trailer nor the shingles.  Five thousand dollars of shingles, three thousand in towing and hauling fees, a new dump trailer to replace the one I broke, and more labor to try to salvage some of the shingles changed my New year cash surplus into the biggest cash hit since I started investing.

    A couple of things I would like to share with you.  

Be very careful in inspecting your equipment and check the weight rating on the ball of the hitch, I never knew they had one.  The tow truck driver had seen 3 such failures that year.  It had 3 different sizes of balls on it, and was bought for only $19.99 at O'Reillys.  My last hitch was $39.00 for a single ball.  You apparently get what you pay for.

Check your insurance.  I thought the borrowed trailer would be covered by my insurance it was not.  Don't tow until you know.  I normally use an old four horse trailer for hauling shingles but this load was too large.

Don't get cocky and think that a $5,000 reserve will be enough to get you by just because it has been years since you had a major problem.  I was lucky and had the ability to cover the money in a line of credit.  I had hoped to save about $3,000 on shingle costs by buying early.

Last, if you see a guy with an upside down trailer in the middle of an interstate with over 3,000 shingles flung about please stop and help him, he has had a bad day.

  I was very lucky in that many kind folks stopped and helped and all made sure I was was OK.  I hope to salvage about half of the shingles, the problem is the plastic wrappers on the back blew off when they scattered.  So even undamaged shingles will melt onto whatever they are stacked on as soon as they warm up very much.  You cannot really do a roof in January very well in Wyoming.  Thanks to real estate investing I had the ability to weather this storm.  If needed I could use the equity I built up in a property to cover it, still the loss of an amount equal to gross rents for 3 houses for a entire year is an unpleasant thing to consider.

This brings up a final thing I think all investors need .... resiliency.  There will be good times, there will be bad times.  Like a marriage you are in for the long haul, not just the fun exciting times.  Hard times will pass and you will be stronger for having endured them.

Thanks for listening and I hope I have helped some of you avoid some of the problems I related.

Please feel free to share a story of your own of bad days that came and how they passed.  I would also appreciate any advice on what to do with a few thousand shingles that have a few chunks missing and upon getting warm will turn into a huge melted blob.  I am thinking I should try to roof a garage or 2 that don't leak but are looking worn.