How do _you_ move equipment? What "tools" do you use?

This reminds me. About 15 years ago I bought a lathe with everything that I could want, 12" x 18" bed, 1 7/8" bore trough the spindle, english and metric feed, etc. This thing was MASSIVE! Everyting was made of cast iron; the bed, the pedestal, even the chip tray on it was made from cast iron. I don't know the exact weight but we guesstimated 3000 pounds! It bent a 1500 pound engine hoist like a pretzel. When I got it home I called a nearby place that had a wrecker that could pick up the tractor units from semi tractor trailers. It had a hydraulic powered long T-shaped boom the could be extended a long way and was rated to pick up 15,000 pounds or something like that. We brought the lathe in on a flat bed cad trailer and parked it in the road in front of the house. We then put a sling around the lathe and hooked it to the boom. They picked it up like it was nothing! They then backed it around the house and got it close to the building where I wanted it, then extended the boom and set the lathe right at the end of the building. (How I actually got it IN the building is another story!) The whole operation only took about five minutes and they only charged about $20. (I did give the driver a generous tip!) It was WELL worth it! Joe At 07:31 AM 10/21/03 -0700, you wrote: