I placed an order for 10 yrds of topsoil on Tues. to be delivered Fri. morning. I was told on the phone it would be there by 10.

I had a 4 hr. rental of a mini front loader to ease the work.

9:30 rolls around and no dirt. I call and the nasty bitty on the phone cannot give me a time when its coming. I press her and she says I will the next delivery when the truck comes back. 3 hrs later still no dirt. I call again and she says it will be out in the afternoon. I explained to her I called 3 days ago, have a machine rental and Im losing daylight. Finally after they have lunch my dirt arrives close to 1:30.

I had to extend my machine rental for a full day which is also going to cost me money.

So much for supporting you family run business. They only care about taking care of their regular big order customers. I will order a pallet of bagged dirt from home depot than order anything from they again.

We deal with trucks and equipment in our line of work and know that nothing ever occurs on time. Accidents, break downs, miscellaneous traffic, employee issues, and anything else you can imagine.

We try to order in order of importance for that exact reason. Good example is bringing in trucks to haul the big vault doors. The cranes are much more expensive than the trucks, so we will always schedule it for a few hours after the expected truck arrival. If the truck is late, no big deal, the crane isn't already there waiting. If the truck is on time we pay for a few hours of wait time.

In your situation I would order materials on one day, and after its arrival rent the equipment.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
In your situation I would order materials on one day, and after its arrival rent the equipment.

This ^^^^^

Shit happens. It's a fact of life. I've worked with enough contractors over our years of home ownership to know that it's unwise to schedule things that closely unless you literally have no choice, as even the best of contractors or suppliers occasionally run into issues.

Agree with ordering the load one day and equipment the next if possible, things do interfere, but bad customer service on the vendors part isn't cool.

An out-of-town compressor supplier we used had a contract with FedEx for ground delivery. I was leaving a meeting one morning heading to the job site for a 80 ton compressor delivery / crane lift. FedEx scheduler called and told me "We got hit with extra deliveries today, yours is going to slip a day"

Not so much.

They made their delivery on-time and the job went smoothly. The phone call to the compressor supplier may have helped. I was more than willing to find a new compressor rebuilder if he couldn't manage his delivery vendor.

I understand when things happen, but I don't understand when things happen AND you're a horse's rear about it. I will climb whatever corporate phone ladder necessary to throw a Karen at you if you both screw up and give me attitude.

How bout the giant landscaping company around here, that gives you an estimate for removing a fallen tree (in the way) and promises to call a day ahead so you can be there. Then 2 weeks later they call and say "be there in 15 minutes." If you say no it's another long wait to "get scheduled."