Excerpt from May 20th email to Snake River Farms:
All went well to the scales, Jody’s weighed about 8:30 a.m., ours about 7:30 a.m. We knew we would have to wait on the brand inspector, expecting him about 9:30 a.m., busy inspecting 4 loads, ½ mile up the road, after inspecting 6 loads, ten miles from here.
We, of course, never heard from the truck driver who had only second-hand directions, and who sailed right on up the road to stop alongside my neighbor’s patchwork corrals as they were bringing- in 200 1000# Mexican steers. The brand inspector, who was hiding behind the chute, sent him on up to our other corrals, where we are weaning calves, to get him gone. Seeing no one there, he went on.
Once done, the brand inspector went up the road, seeing no one there, turned around went back to where he started this a.m. to inspect 3 more loads. Meanwhile, another neighbor brings the truck driver to us in his little Toyota. Fortunately, the truck driver stopped where the road narrows and we could let him through a gate to get turned around. But while waiting for the brand inspector with us, the truck driver mentions his earlier encounter with the brand inspector by saying, ‘Maybe, I should have said something sooner…’, when we realize that the brand inspector mistakenly sent the truck driver in the wrong direction, then missing the open gate and trucked backed up to the chute, left the canyon.
Moral: “Assume nothing.”
Truck loaded and gone @ 11:45 a.m.