OK, how about this, back in the 80's a customer of mine asked me if I wanted to go down to the town yard too this equipment show, I said I read about that in the town newspaper and asked him why and what that was all about. He said it was something to get the young kids in town interested in the DPW for future employment, I sort of rolled my eyes and said I ain't paying too go to that, he answered me, no my brother runs the whole DPW (pre-indictment), we don't have to pay. He had just gotten a new plow truck and wanted me to see these (at the time) flashy strobe lights for a bolt in replacement to the marker/turn signal lights on new trucks and wanted my opinion. We looked at them and got the pitch from the rep, I told him it looked like quality kit and installation and gave him a installation price but just the kit price was like $300 so that put him off right away.
Next exhibit, onto 'RinoLiner' lol, he was thinking about it and he already had the plastic truck bed liner (which were pretty much the standard for pickups by then) in his wife's nice little grocery getter PU which was a 2wd C'something Chevy short bed, small block, trim package, 2 tone black/silver 4spd, nice little truck, but I guess his wife (and many others) bitched about things sliding around as they do with the plastic liners and he thought the grippy rubber spray on liner was the way to go. My first comment was that the slide'ee plastic had a advantage with heavy items to move them around and they can tear up the plastic but not that bad, I go, can you imagine trying to slide something on that rubber, your guys will tear that up right away, then you have a salt sand mix in the bed and your guys dig a pointy shovel into the rubber lining tearing it up then what do you do? Patch it?... bad idea, stay with the plastic liner and if you really worried about stuff getting between the liner and bed, pop it out every spring (like he does) and clean & dry it out.
One thing I noticed while we were leaning on the bed was how thick the coating was along the bed rails which made me think how many spray on coats does that take to get it to what it was like 1/4" thickness, we didn't get any pitch from a rep as no one was around just some pamphlet's, I advised him to stay with the plastic liner, I told him that's the show demo truck do you think a franchisee will spray on that much?
Fast forward 2 decades later to Herculiner... One day I go to work at the hospital and my wing man (related) coworker doesn't show up, he had mentioned to me the previous day that our supervisor was taking us off our regular duties to do something special. oh boy... So I get stuck doing this pickup truck, actually we started the job the day before ie the scotch pad scuffing of the paint and my co-worker that has been a painter most of his career knew it was gonna suck so conveniently bailed the next day leaving me to 'step up'. sheech. We were outside in the covered parking garage with very little breeze on a fairly hot day, our supervisor brings us a very dirty big pedestal shop fan that I think was in the welding shop as it spewed metal grinding bits all over the white paint we were scuffing up, then it grenade'd into sparks and ground to a halt <smh> I got stuck doing the application, epoxy ****, once you mix it you can't stop, my respirator was getting drowning wet from breath moisture, the fumes were very bad, don't remember if I got another fan, eventually I pitched the respirator (killed some brain cells that day) but I got it done.
I *****, and said to my supervisor that he should of put a plastic liner in it, he whinged about it having a power tailgate and cutting around for that would be a pain, and also commented on why I didn't mask the bedrails at the back by the tailgate to be rounded instead of a straight 90 tape corner. I go, is it your truck? Do you drive it? (it was a off campus truck) I mean WTF it's a company truck WGAS? The thing needed like 2/3/4 more coats to make it as thick as the illustrations on the web shows, the kit that they got from Grainger was like $125.00 a gallon with this dinky little roller which I later found the kits on fleaBay for like $30.00 a gallon 'cuz it SUCKS, LMAO.
Later on I went out one day from the office for a smoke break about a year later and the truck was parked right next to our roll off, I had too look, it was all scun'ed & scraped up with rust showing already through the scars of the thin coating.... stoooopid.
Even many years later I ran into my old supervisor at the Joe Robison Vintage Harley Show during BikeWeek and he had to remind me that I really 'Stepped Up' and got the job done on the bed lining job. At least he was on his 1978 FLH and had finally got the transmission fixed which I razed him about that as he knew I'd rebuilt 1970's Harleys and when he asked me if I knew how to 'fix' his Big Twin's transmission and I told him, sorry never had one apart, it's pretty simple thou, just get the factory service manual, my transmission shift's like butter even after 90,000 miles, 'CUZ IT HASN'T BEEN ABUSED!
Great little ending to all this is that on a recent "Good Day Daytona Live" local morning yapfest the host announced that the Hospital through a independent review board got a D rating for for a bunch of stuff mainly infections. ohh feck'in A... And the Port Orange Campus, where they shipped off my old supervisor 'cuz everyone else in the shop hated him, I thought he was pretty OK, but figured out he was also 'Related' to Admin, his campus got a "F".
This is a decade after the Hospital paid a 100 million dollar fine to settle a whistleblower MediCare fraud case. What's that saying? You can't make this **** up.
Study: AdventHealth Earns 'A' Grade, Halifax Health Grades Drop
