# Auction haul moving - 1600lbs of blueprint drawers



## FliesLikeABrick (Jul 31, 2021)

In short - I got some cheap, big, heavy drawers.  Lessons learned/major take-aways at the very bottom if you want to skip through some pictures and get to the conclusion.

At a local auction, I saw a lot of drawers listed as "Gasket drawers", but that is just what this plant used them for.  They appeared to be 42x30 blueprint drawers, on two pallets:



I bid the opening bid, $25, opportunistically.  I did pretty well at the auction, winning some other projects (1998 Ford Ranger); and won this lot of drawers at the $25 opening bid




I moved the top unit of one stack (which was not on a pallet, but on a purpose-built  dolly with broken wheels) into the back of the truck to lighten it, and winched the other two up into the trailer.  The auction/warehouse staff loaded the other stack of 3 units with a forklift.

From moving the one unit into the back of the truck, I realized these were *heavy*.  I could not slide the unit on the truck's bed liner, and could barely slide it on pieces of pipe that I laid in the bed.  I estimated these were at least 200-250 lbs per section, 6 total sections.

Upon getting home I made some room in the garage (2 other loads of auction stuff already had been dumped in there, including a gearhead drill press for a friend of mine)






After backing the trailer in I worked on a plan for how to unload.  My pallet jack doesn't do well on this trailer due to the separated steel deck, especially with items this heavy.  However it wouldn't be able to get under the front stack, which is on that low-sitting broken dolly.

I ended up using my 6' prybar to work the rear stack/pallet backwards a few inches, so I could fit chains down around the front and fished underneath it.

Slinging two tow chains under it, and then hooking them together through a shackle on the hoist - I was  able to lift it.  This seemed stable, so I ran with it instead of lowering it and twekaing it to be more level.






Fortunately I was able to make enough space that I could roll the gantry towards the back of the garage instead of pulling the trailer forward under the suspended load and dragging the tailgate.

So these suckers are heavy...



This palletized stack of 3 units tipped the scales at just over 800 lbs, roughly 250-260lbs per section once you take out some weight for the chains and pallet.


I repeated the process for the second stack




Then had to figure out how to get the 3rd piece out of the back of the truck, which was lower than the top of the stack sitting on the ground (This is how I managed to dump it into the truck at the warehouse in the first place).  I ended up jacking the back of the truck up, such that the tailgate was 1/2" above the stack - so that I could slide it out and gingerly let it drop/lock into place on the others. (no pictures of this, was too focused on not losing a finger)

Now to move these into somewhere else, not in the garage, which is tight on space due to the auction and some open projects (including repairing a neighbor's mower)




A few challenges:
- There is no way for me to lift these one section at a time, to stack them in another arrangement.  Even with the gantry crane and 1 ton chain hoist, I have no good way to grab and lift individual sections
- The stack on a broken dolly needs to be put on a pallet.
- I don't have a good way to get these off of the pallets once I move them somewhere else.  Equally importantly, even if I did -- there's no great way to get them back onto a pallet without trashing whatever floor they are sitting on, so these will probably live indefinitely on pallets
- The stack that is already on a pallet is not centered on it.  The back edge is hanging off, and the left side is.  As a result the whole thing is tweaked and the drawers all stick because the frame is sagging while it is sitting like this.

Putting the stack with the broken dolly onto a pallet was pretty straightforward, and I did not take pictures.  I lifted the stack over a pallet, and lowered it onto blocks on either side of the pallet (the dolly is just wider than the pallets I have).  This let me remove the chains before it was sitting on the pallet.  Then I lifted the pallet to lift the drawers - at which point I could remove the blocks.

The other stack which is on a pallet... is more difficult.   The drawers are not wider than that pallet, so I cannot use a similar trick to solve everything

I did lower the unit onto blocks for the two sides that are hanging off of the pallet.  However there were two remaining challenges:
- I needed to be able to get the front of the unit onto the front board of the pallet
- I needed to be able to shift this around on the pallet, but there is no good way to grab or pry on anything.

For the first part, I used my 6' prybar to lift the corners of the unit a bit, and put some scrap thin wall tubing under it to act as ramps, where the lower edges of the cabinet needed to come up and over a board of the pallet surface.






Then for the second challenge, I wrapped a tow chain around the bottom of the unit.  I put my prybar between the chain and the pallet, using vice grips (or what's left of an ancient rusty pair) to keep the chain from sliding down the prybar.  Then I could pry against the pallet and pull on the chain to move the 800lbs of drawers into the exact center of the pallet






The last step was to get these into position.  With a bit of makeshift ramp to get out of the garage and into the woodshop; and some improvised floor covering (cardboard) to protect the floor in the next room - I was able to get these into a reasonable place until we decide on a final position.  Leaving them on pallets means we just need some vacuuming+cardboard to move them around in that room as we finalize the layout some day.











As always, thanks for reading.  If nothing else, I hope this might help others tackle their moving/improvised DIY rigging challenges.  My key takeaways:
- A cheap or rented trailer is extremely helpful, instead of having to load/unload anything higher (even the back of a small pickup)
- If you have a chance to get a free or cheap (or broken) pallet jack *get it* -- this is unbelievably useful in the shop, for everything from cabinets to moving workbenches, lathes, or other tools. I find myself stacking random heavy crap on pallets when I am organizing, just to avoid lifting items multiple times when I inevitably need to move them during organization.  This pallet jack was free, but I had to drive it from a friend a few states away in my hometown during a visit, and it needed new seals, entry rollers, and a lot of TLC
- There isn't much that a 6' prybar and some towchains can't move, especially if you throw in a hand winch or better.  The first stack of pallets was winched into the trailer by putting a ratchet strap around it and winching it up into the trailer with a come-along, and occasionally using the prybar to keep the broken wheels from getting stuck on the inflection points of the trailer tailgate.
- The most surprising things can be *HEAVY*.  These blueprint drawer units are probably at least 50-60 years old, and overbuilt so that they could be arbitrarily stacked and support the weight of the units above them (plus contents).  I did attend the auction viewing prior to bidding and saw how big these were, but still underestimated the weight.  However, I figured they could be winched or forklifted into the trailer and I could figure out unloading at home.


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## hman (Aug 1, 2021)

OK, maybe a really dumb question ... but were the drawers empty, or full of heavy gaskets?


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## FliesLikeABrick (Aug 1, 2021)

hman said:


> OK, maybe a really dumb question ... but were the drawers empty, or full of heavy gaskets?


Hah. Empty except for a few paper/cardboard gaskets here and there!


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## Brento (Aug 1, 2021)

What do you plan on using them for?


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## Brento (Aug 1, 2021)

hman said:


> OK, maybe a really dumb question ... but were the drawers empty, or full of heavy gaskets?


I was thinking the same thing like watch these things are loaded up the whazoo.


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## BGHansen (Aug 1, 2021)

Those will wonderful for shop organization.  I've got 1/4"-20 cap screws dumped into 3 or 4 plastic bins. Have to dump them out to find a particular size.  You've got enough space to organize by size, color, head style and date you got them if you want to go that far. Whatcha planning for splitting up the drawers?

Bruce


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## BGHansen (Aug 1, 2021)

Really nice haul, in my area folks ask around $300 for a 5-drawer 42" x 30" on Craig's List.  You get the obligatory YOU SUCK award!

Bruce


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## FliesLikeABrick (Aug 1, 2021)

Brento said:


> What do you plan on using them for?


Miscellaneous small shop hardware, and my wife is an avid seed collector /saver from and for the garden. She saw me bid on these and laid claim to some for curating the seed storages

This was an opportunistic purchase more than one I had a plan for


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## Brento (Aug 1, 2021)

Ive seen them around me but to big and didnt know where to put it as well as that drawer sizes wouldnt work well for me


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## Superburban (Aug 1, 2021)

I have two sections (10 drawers) that I acquired at an auction. Yea, the weight also surprised me. They are managable if you take the drawers out.


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## NCjeeper (Aug 1, 2021)

Sweet score. Those will hold alot of tooling.


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## C-Bag (Aug 1, 2021)

Nice score. I went through looking for ones like yours and stumbled on a set that I kick myself for not pursing. My problem with the ones you have is they are too deep for my cramped shop. The set of 8 drawer cabs were 40”w but only 18” deep. They came out of a school and were used for storing and organizing video tapes. So I’m keeping my radar tuned for those. I love shallow drawers for most all my tools. I also like finding middle tool boxes as they are often shallow drawers and can be built into benches and not have to worry about the top opening.


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## Boswell (Aug 1, 2021)

Nice buy. Was there a reason that you did not just remove the drawers from a unit for moving? I bet the frame was half of less of the total weight. I got a slightly damaged but new Vidmar at an auction and had to remove the drawers to be able to offload it out of the back of my pickup.


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## FliesLikeABrick (Aug 1, 2021)

Boswell said:


> Nice buy. Was there a reason that you did not just remove the drawers from a unit for moving? I bet the frame was half of less of the total weight. I got a slightly damaged but new Vidmar at an auction and had to remove the drawers to be able to offload it out of the back of my pickup.


yeah a few reasons:
1) If I took the drawers out, I wouldn't have had room in the truck and trailer for the drawers and the units.  I wasn't sure which way the units would end up positioned in the truck or trailer, and whether I would have access to reinstall the drawers.  Or if the frames flexed because of the trailer's construction, and the drawers wouldn't be able to go back in
2) I was pressed for time, because of how I had to position my truck and trailer in their warehouse.  I had to get in, load these, and get out because I was blocking in a large truck in the back of the warehouse as well as more waiting to get in.  Additionally this was in a secure facility where I had to be escorted at all times, so there was general time pressure to not screw around
3) The drawers had unknown amounts of stuff in them that I did not want to make a mess of.  Almost exclusively paper gaskets, but a mess I didn't want to create and have to deal with under the time pressure
4) The second set was able to be loaded with a forklift anyway
5) Some of the drawers were finicky, and I didn't have time to troubleshoot which ones could be removed or how to remove them, etc
6) Whe unloading at home, I was able to lift with the crane and at that point it made no difference whether there were drawers installed or not (1 ton powered chain hoist on a 2 ton gantry)
7) Except for the unit that was in the back of the truck -- which was positioned sideways to fit in the bed; so the drawers couldn't be opened let alone removed
8) (added in edit) -- also if I removed the drawers, there was a good chance I would ding/bend/damage them.  Or, I would wonder upon finding damage later on whether I created that damage or it was pre-existing.  The concern for damage is in large part due to the time pressure to get these loaded.

None of these reasons is particularly good, but painted an overall picture of "don't open that can of worms"


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## C-Bag (Aug 1, 2021)

FliesLikeABRick said:


> don't open that can of worms"


LOL, been there, I would have done the same thing. Every single time I’ve ever had to pull drawers it’s ended in some kind of cluster.


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