26/07/2026
7 October 2024 (a character building time):
So after getting the emails from both the food truck builders and shipping company agent to say that my cart had landed and was all ready to collect, we drove up to the depot in Auckland very much excited to bring her back. Truly thought I’d get a morning of shopping in before swinging by in the afternoon to hitch it up 😂 One last phone call from the agent 20 minutes before exiting the motorway, “So it’s a little over $5,500 to have it released from the yard btw, and also there aren’t any wheels on it” … 🙃… I just KNEW something like this would happen, hence why I did not decide to bring my bestie and make a day of it like my family suggested.
This was what we arrived to basically; this man dragging it out with tie-downs (that kept snapping) and us asking him to stop lifting it higher because its about to crunch the roof in 🥲. We borrowed his forklift, plus two crescents from the business next door, and spent the next several hours dragging it around, going through the mountain of stuff inside of it to get the four wheels out (underneath literally everything), fitting axles and suspension to the cart, running the brake system, popping the wheels on, and wiring up the tail lights (some of this done outside their yard as it was after 5pm and we had to let them go home)
It was getting later and we couldn’t reach the hole in the ceiling to fit the vent to close the gap (required access from the rooftop) so we drove home back through a storm with it taped up hoping that was enough 😅 it was during the SH1 nightly road closures before Tirau (which we forgot) so had to back track and go via Rotorua. Obviously when I got it home the fun was long gone, so I parked it up for an entire month without looking at it and jetted off to Vanuatu to decompress with my sister 😂 I am glad for the experience and that I can look back and laugh at the absurdity of It all
