Well, all of the Ebay ads for the lathe I was interested in had a "Make Offer" option, so what I did was to make an offer knocking off $150 from the price to each and every one of them. One of them counter offered with a mere $20 off, and the rest declined (pretty much the same wording in all of those declines). Seemed pretty likely there is really only one seller involved. So I pulled the trigger on the "one" who gave me at least a token discount.
But then the guy notifies me that since delivery is to a residential address, I have to pay $150 more for the lift gate service. Hmm, the ad said "free shipping", and that would certainly not be "free". I declined, telling him that I always meet those large deliveries at the local Walmart parking lot, and transfer the box into the bed of Connie's pickup truck. I thought for certain the guy would tell me that is their "company policy so go pound sand" or something, but surprisingly he agreed to drop that charge, and even offered to pay for the lift gate service anyway. Hmm. Makes me wonder just how cheaply made this lathe is and what the profit margin they are working with is like? Well, it's not like I am going to be putting this thing through any heavy use, so what the heck.
But in any event, the order was placed, and I was surprised to see that instead of coming out of California like the Ebay ad said, it was shipped out of Philadelphia. And via UPS Freight. It is in Dothan Alabama right now, and UPS is telling me that they don't have a freight depot in Tallahassee. Now they do have a depot there, and I can see Google Map images of trucks all over the place, so I'm not sure what is going on. I thought that if they could just hold it at the depot, we would be able to drive up there whenever it seems convenient and have them use a forklift to put the box into the bed of the pickup truck for us. Seems that this would be easier than trying to manhandle 180 lbs from the bed of the 18 wheeler to the pickup truck bed. And one real wrinkle right now is TS (soon to become hurricane) Sally. Good chance of heavy rain all this week. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that UPS Freight says they don't come down to Crawfordville more than one a week or so, but they do go to Tallahassee every day. So I'm not sure what we are going to be able to work out. I sure as heck don't want to take delivery of that box in heavy rain. Too much chance of Connie or myself slipping on rain slicked surfaces climbing in and out of the bed of her truck. Not worth breaking a neck over.
So we will see. In any event, when I do get it into the garage, I am going to give it a thorough inspection to see if there are any flaws that would mean having to reject the lathe completely. I read on another forum about some guy getting a similar lathe that had a cracked bed. Another guy had casting flaws in some areas, but they weren't actually show stoppers. Some other guy was complaining about seven thousandths runout at the chuck, but I'm not sure my needs will have that mattering all that much to me. I'll be doing all this inspection stuff right in the bed of Connie's truck, so it won't be too tough packing it back up to send it back, if it comes to that. And I will also be doing the cleaning and disassembly, if it passes cursory muster, from the truck bed too. That way Connie can help me carry the lathe over to the other building piecemeal, which should be a LOT easier to do than the entire assembled unit.
I've got the Compact 5 lathe off of the worktable in the work room where the new lathe will be going, and into the garage now. And preparing the worktable for the bigger lathe so it will be ready when it is ready to be moved. I am going to bolt down another layer of plyboard, and reinforce the legs on one side of the table. It should be just fine, as is, but I like overkill.
