Bought a forklift

Last week I bid on a glycol unit on eBay. If you don’t know what a glycol unit is, it is essentially a refrigeration unit that I’ll be mounting on the roof of the warehouse which will recirculate glycol, an anti-freeze-like liquid (don’t worry, it’s food grade). This liquid runs through a portion of the fermenters and bright beer tanks to regulate fermentation temperature and to bring the beer to a low temperature after fermentation.

Anyway, it was fairly new equipment, had only been used for 3 years or so before it was decommissioned, so I thought it might work for me. I won it for $3,500, a pleasant number considering I was going to buy a new unit with less cooling power for around $15,000. Then came the shipping costs, which brought the overall price to around $5,000. I still don’t understand why it costs so much– a 2,500 lb. pallet of grain from across the country costs $350 or so to ship. I asked how I could reduce this price, and was told that if I didn’t need a lift gate, I could save $200. So I bought a forklift.

It’s from 1986, has around 5,000 hours on it, and It’ll handle 5,500 lbs., or at least it could in 1986. It seems to run well, and it shouldn’t need to run too often for my purposes. I’ll have to post a picture of the beast soon. It’s lime green, which means it must be given a name. I don’t know why things that are painted ugly colors have to be named, but it can be one of the brewery’s mascots. Please post some suggested names in the comments area. Rachel and I came up with guacamole and limey, so you can tell we need some help with this.

EDIT: Here’s a picture of the beast:

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