Strangest way you got a new customer

[Southside]

So last night just before midnight one of the dogs runs outside and starts to bark, so I look toward the road and sure enough I can see some sort of tractor headlights sitting at the end of the driveway.  Well the headlights go out and a pickup pulls in along side of it, I hear a couple of doors bang and voices.  Now mind you we are out in the boonies here, not as far as some folks live, but if you need a gallon of milk, gas, or a bolt, it's a 14 mile drive one way.  We don't see much traffic that is just passing through and at night you can hear the coal train rolling by and it's 5 miles away as the crow flies.  Well, I figure given that it's all of 4 degrees out at the time someone is gelled up or in some other sort of mechanical trouble.  Put on the layers and head toward the road. 

Parked there at the end of the drive is a New Holland farm tractor with a highway plow on it and a Ford dually.  Around these parts the DOT contracts with anyone who has a truck or tractor that can hang a plow on it and that's how the roads are plowed.  When I get to about 3 feet from the truck the guys inside of it suddenly notice a person walking toward them and they just about jump out of the cab as all they know is that they pulled into a cow pasture in the middle of nowhere at midnight and suddenly they have a visitor.  (Can't see the house from the road and I guess he missed the little sign I have)

Turns out they were not broken down, just needed a place to park while the guy in the truck brought the guy in the tractor some food.  We get to talking for a bit and they are from the next county over so they have not been able to  figure out the snake pit of roads over our way.  It is a genuine mess - I tell customers not to follow their GPS as Siri will literally bring you down a bunch of extra dirt roads to get you here and other GPS units send you to about the middle of the farm road frontage where there is a bridge over the creek and announce "You have arrived" - makes me look like a genuine troll who lives under a bridge in that case.  There are several roads around that change names in the middle of the road - no turn, no nothing, just the name changes.  In one case one road changes names three times like that, so these guys are tired, turned around, cold, and confused about how to get to one of the tractors they left parked. 

We talk about cows and crops and I mention the logging and sawmill operation - the driver looks at me and says "You're the guy!!"  Turns out he has a whack of nice pine logs that he wants sawn up, had been asking around for who has a sawmill and was told about us but could not figure out just where in the dickens we were given the 20 some odd miles of White Oak Road and numerous off shoots such as the Old White Oak Rd, White Oak Church Rd, etc. 

His low-boy is loaded with the logs and he is bringing them by this week.  When I got back inside my wife half woke up and asked me what I was doing.  So I told her making arrangements for a load of pine to be delivered.  Naturally she thought I was being sarcastic, until I told her I was serious, at which point she sat up and wanted the whole story.   For me this is by far the strangest way I have ever met a new customer. 

[47sawdust]

Great story,I'm glad your wife enjoyed it too.

[coxy]

short and sweet   about 17years old parked on a dirt road about 1am no one travels the so thought the laws pulls up elbows and cloths start flying law gives me the 5th degree  :-[ and I ended up selling him 3 picker loads of fire wood the next week he got the wood real cheap never told my dad the real story about getting the costumer because I had his new 3 day old truck at the time :D :D that's my story and I'm sticking to it  ;D