| Today I drove to Yankee Custom Truck and bought a Loadhandler 3000.
I heard about these from my landscaping friend at Pawtuckaway Nursery a few weeks ago, and a quick search of the internet turned up the manufacturer's web site, and although I should have figured out from their vendor list that "Yankee" might be in my neighborhood, a quick telephone call established that all I would have to do is drive to Nashua to pick one up.
I had already heard good rumors about these in the short time I knew about them - the video on the Loadhandler site is also pretty impressive.
Assembly was pretty straightforward, and the instructions are written mostly in English. Not saying which tools are required (not many) is irrelevant to me in a product intended for the kind of people who would want one of these. They have 'em.
Two things I became curious about as I set this thing up were one, how it would cope with the elements if it was left in place semi-permanently, and two, in the same vein, why they don't sell a protective case of some sort to allow it to be stowed on board easily. I guess the argument from the previous paragraph applies here - if you reach that point in life where you think you need one of these, making a case for it should be another fun excuse to spend an hour or two in the workshop.
I need to type some more gibberish here to take up the space next to the picture of the carton to the left!
From some preliminary experiments, it looks as though the handle might interfere a bit with the steppin' toe bumper, or vice versa. I might have to make a handle with another inch or two of offset. We'll see. The instructions recommend moving the whole thing sideways if there is interference, but I want to use it centered. I say this, of course, without ever having used it.
| 
