Renting a Sod Cutter

This is from a few days ago: Liz, doing some planning for how she wants to re-shape the yard.

A “before” shot, before we started using the sod cutter.

This thing… was actually quite stressful for me to procure. It must be my planning and default stress, but the whole process was a bit daunting. The thing is around 300 pounds, and I was worried about transporting it to/from Home Depot.

The thing with tool rentals at HD: you can’t schedule them. You just have to call or show up, and hope the tool is available to rent. Which makes renting a van or a truck to transport the tool a bit tricky.

I measured my car, and this thing wouldn’t quite make it in. And was also way too heavy to lift up.

There are trucks to rent at Home Depot, but those too are also “first come, first serve.”

I ended up waking early this morning, and drove out to a store that had one of these guys to rent. There was also a truck available for rent, but the price was $20 for the first 75 mnutes, and then $5 for every 15 minutes afterwards.

I rented the sod cutter, but then decided to check out a nearby UHaul to see if there was something cheaper. While this was going on, I was hoping no one else would rent the truck at HD.

At Uhaul, no dice on a truck or van. But they had a box truck that was way too big to rent. So I opted to go back to Home Depot for theirs. On arriving, the guy in front of me was interested in renting the truck (luckily for me, he never came back after about 10 minutes).

I also rented two stell ramps, which allowed me to move the sod cutter up to the bed of the truck. Although… what actually happened was that I was struggling to pull it up the ramp myself, and two Hispanic gents who were in the parking lot saw me struggling, ran over, and helped me get the thing up.

I had a hard time getting traction on the ramp, and it was a great help that they showed up out of nowhere and just ran over to help.

Back home, I was unloading the thing with Liz but felt wary. And was able to get a neighbor to help us ease it down. Which removed a lot of my stress (the thing was super, super heavy).

After a few passes, we got the hang of things. Though the sod cutter had some issues when we pulled the blade up out of the ground. Liz and I eventually got into a good rhyhthm.

On packing the thing back into the truck, I got our neighbor from across the street (Mark) to help us. We ended up actually driving the sod cutter up the ramp, but having him help stabilize was also a huge help.

At Home Depot, I was able to get a few employees to help bring the thing down. Next time, if I rent one of these things again, a van might have been easier (less of an incline, and a lower bed). A trailer hitch would have been ideal.

Related:
Beautifying the Backyard

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