Home Depot Trip ?
03-27-2005, 11:58 AM
#1
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Home Depot Trip ?
I don't know if anyone has posted this already, but this is my first view of it, and I thought I'd show you. I sure HOPE that no one here learns anything from this, as I would expect you'd already know.
The text I received with the pic:
The car is still running, as can be witnessed by the exhaust.
A woman is either asleep or otherwise out in the front seat passenger side. The driver was jogging up and down on
Rt. 925.(in the background)
Witnesses said their physical/mental state was OTHER than normal. The driver finally came back after the police were called, and was found crouched behind the rear
of the car, attempting to cut the twine around the
load! Luckily, the police stopped him and had the load removed.
The materials were loaded at Home Depot. Their store manager said they made the customer sign a waiver.
While the plywood and 2X4s are fairly obvious,
what you can t see is the back seat, which contains -- are you ready for this? --
10 bags of concrete @ 80 lbs. each. They estimated the load weight at 3000 lbs.
Both back tires exploded, the wheels bent and the back shocks were driven through the floorboard.
The car, with FLA (naturally) plates, was headed for Columbiana, Al. where
the couple presumably planned to build a new house.
Chris
03-27-2005, 01:07 PM
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Yup, and it is one of those few things that is so surreal, that it's actually true:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/lumber.asp
"The stupidity of some people in this world never fails to amaze me. This attached picture is real -- not doctored in any way -- and was taken last week in Waldorf, MD by a Transportation Supervisor for a company that delivers building materials for 84 Lumber. When he saw it there in the parking lot of IHOP, he went and bought a camera to take pictures. The car is still running as can be witnessed by the exhaust.
A woman is either asleep or otherwise out in the front seat passenger side. The guy driving it was over jogging up and down on Rt. 925 in the background. The witnesses said their physical state was OTHER than normal and the police just shook their heads in amazement. The driver finally came back after the police were there and was getting down at the back to cut the twine around the load. They told him to get back until it was taken off.
The materials were loaded at Home Depot. The Home Depot store manager made the customer sign a waiver before loading. Both back tires are trashed. The back shocks were driven up through the floorboard. On the roof are many 2X4s, 4X4s and OSL sheets of lumber. The load isn't all that meets the eye either. In the back seat were ten 80-pound bags of concrete! They estimated the load weight at 3000 lbs. The car is a VW Jetta with FL plates and the guy said he was headed for Annapolis!
Origins: This one's a good example of the pitfalls of allowing pure skepticism to overwhelm ordinary evidence. After we originally put the picture and story up with an "Undetermined" status, we received plenty of mail from various "experts" offering numerous reasons (both physical and digital) why the photo couldn't possibly be real.
Then we starting hearing from people who were in Waldorf that day (including employees of the Home Depot store where the building materials were purchased and the IHoP restaurant seen in the background of the photo) and actually saw the car. Some of them even took their own pictures of it, like the following:
Then we started finding new stories about the "lumber car," including one from an enterprising reporter who tracked the hapless couple down through their license plates. He wasn't able to elicit any edifying information from them, but his story was accompanied by even more photographs, including a close-up of the snoozing woman in the passenger's seat:
Not everything is too weird to be true."
http://www.snopes.com/photos/lumber.asp
"The stupidity of some people in this world never fails to amaze me. This attached picture is real -- not doctored in any way -- and was taken last week in Waldorf, MD by a Transportation Supervisor for a company that delivers building materials for 84 Lumber. When he saw it there in the parking lot of IHOP, he went and bought a camera to take pictures. The car is still running as can be witnessed by the exhaust.
A woman is either asleep or otherwise out in the front seat passenger side. The guy driving it was over jogging up and down on Rt. 925 in the background. The witnesses said their physical state was OTHER than normal and the police just shook their heads in amazement. The driver finally came back after the police were there and was getting down at the back to cut the twine around the load. They told him to get back until it was taken off.
The materials were loaded at Home Depot. The Home Depot store manager made the customer sign a waiver before loading. Both back tires are trashed. The back shocks were driven up through the floorboard. On the roof are many 2X4s, 4X4s and OSL sheets of lumber. The load isn't all that meets the eye either. In the back seat were ten 80-pound bags of concrete! They estimated the load weight at 3000 lbs. The car is a VW Jetta with FL plates and the guy said he was headed for Annapolis!
Origins: This one's a good example of the pitfalls of allowing pure skepticism to overwhelm ordinary evidence. After we originally put the picture and story up with an "Undetermined" status, we received plenty of mail from various "experts" offering numerous reasons (both physical and digital) why the photo couldn't possibly be real.
Then we starting hearing from people who were in Waldorf that day (including employees of the Home Depot store where the building materials were purchased and the IHoP restaurant seen in the background of the photo) and actually saw the car. Some of them even took their own pictures of it, like the following:
Then we started finding new stories about the "lumber car," including one from an enterprising reporter who tracked the hapless couple down through their license plates. He wasn't able to elicit any edifying information from them, but his story was accompanied by even more photographs, including a close-up of the snoozing woman in the passenger's seat:
Not everything is too weird to be true."
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03-27-2005, 02:40 PM
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Re: Home Depot Trip ?
Originally posted by Stamey
I don't know if anyone has posted this already, but this is my first view of it, and I thought I'd show you.
I don't know if anyone has posted this already, but this is my first view of it, and I thought I'd show you.
03-28-2005, 04:57 PM
#13
Thats MR Hoss to you buddy!
I've seen this story float around many times now, but it STILL amazes me to look at that picture.
Knowing how SLICK those 4x8 OSB sheets are and how HEAVY that treated lumber is, it just blows my mind trying to figure out how in the world they got it to stay on the car as long as it did. When I was in college I worked for a lumber yard. We would literally put 8-10 STEEL bands around a bundle of OSB in order to keep it from busting and sliding when it was dumped off of the truck...and many times it STILL busted the bands and went sliding everywhere (much to my dismay because as a driver I had to stack all that stuff back up on the jobsite). The first time I saw that picture I e-mailed it back to my old boss from the lumber yard. It still amazes me that they were able to even LOAD it onto the car...much less KEEP it there!!
That said, in my days of working in the yard, the head basketball coach at the time for the Texas A&M basketball team came in the yard with a brand new car wanting to pick up 15 sheets of OSB. We asked him how he intended to get it home in his car and he said he planned to tie it to the top. He had no luggage rack or anything!! I personally delivered it to his house later that afternoon in one of our hot shot trucks just so we could avoid him the embarrassment of dropping plywood all over the road.
Knowing how SLICK those 4x8 OSB sheets are and how HEAVY that treated lumber is, it just blows my mind trying to figure out how in the world they got it to stay on the car as long as it did. When I was in college I worked for a lumber yard. We would literally put 8-10 STEEL bands around a bundle of OSB in order to keep it from busting and sliding when it was dumped off of the truck...and many times it STILL busted the bands and went sliding everywhere (much to my dismay because as a driver I had to stack all that stuff back up on the jobsite). The first time I saw that picture I e-mailed it back to my old boss from the lumber yard. It still amazes me that they were able to even LOAD it onto the car...much less KEEP it there!!
That said, in my days of working in the yard, the head basketball coach at the time for the Texas A&M basketball team came in the yard with a brand new car wanting to pick up 15 sheets of OSB. We asked him how he intended to get it home in his car and he said he planned to tie it to the top. He had no luggage rack or anything!! I personally delivered it to his house later that afternoon in one of our hot shot trucks just so we could avoid him the embarrassment of dropping plywood all over the road.
