There’s a 1960’s era neighborhood / development just east of our road frontage. Wife and I pretty routinely take walks through the neighborhood.
One of the houses we routinely walk by had some plumbing work done a couple months ago which required ripping out part of the concrete driveway. The contractor that tore it out used their mini-ex to stack it neatly by the road. The concrete has been sitting there going on three months.
We saw the homeowner out in his yard on one of our walks recently and said hello. Got to talking and eventually asked him what he planned to do with his little pile of scrap concrete. He said he hadn’t quite figured out how to get rid of it. He was kind of thinking he could just throw it all in his pickup and haul it to a dump somewhere but they just moved into the area from some city in New Jersey (he said, but I forgot) so he didn’t know where to take it and he has a bad back so he couldn’t quite pick up the bigger pieces. I didn’t know if he was kidding or planning to bust up the bigger pieces or if picking up slabs of concrete that weigh a few hundred pounds was the reason for his bad back. Never asked because I kind of wanted his concrete.
We have three creek crossings and a couple of mud holes we have to drive the Mule and tractor through. I like having some large “aggregate” on hand. Offered him the deal I wouldn’t charge him for hauling off his concrete if he didn’t charge me for taking it. He asked if I had a truck and was confident I was in good enough shape to pick up the bigger pieces to load them. Told him, yes I have a pickup truck. Yes, it’s ragged enough I could haul scrap concrete in it. No, I’m not strong enough to pick up the bigger pieces, not because I’m old and fat, but because I’ve never been able to pick up an odd shaped 400lb hunk of concrete and toss it in a pickup. However, I also have a little tractor with a grapple and it’s close enough to pick up the concrete and road it back to our place. He gladly accepted.
Two loads later, it was back at our place in a little separate pile of its own because it’s relatively flat. The other scrap concrete we have is more random.
After moving it, did some rough calculations figuring the weight of dry concrete at about 150lb/cf. The larger pieces ranged from about 300lb to near 500lb. Still don’t know if the guy really thought he could have single handedly loaded them onto a truck by himself before he messed up his back. If he could, he must have been a beast back in the day.
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