Six days a week, 52 weeks a year, and sometimes more than once a day, HD Hauling trucks over to our place, loads as many 12 bins on to a trailer, and hauls them to the Post Office loading dock. Sounds mundane, and it certainly would be if not for the fact the the hauling is done by a guy on a bike.
I am very proud of the fact that our book shipments are hauled to the Post Office by bicycle trailer. Practically everyone I know says they have seen the Books by Chance logo on the back of a bike trailer going up and down Liberty Street in Ann Arbor. It sets a good example. It gets people talking and thinking. And on days when it is pouring rain, or bitterly cold with blowing snow, it is amazing and awe inspiring.
Twitter is a text based communication tool that makes it possible for a person to easily communicate with hundreds, or even thousands, of people wherever they are. It is social, mostly ambient, and sometimes direct, communication. I’ve connected with other book sellers as far away as Germany. I also met Homeless Dave via Twitter, a guy in my neighborhood I had yet to meet. He was twittering about his new bike trailer, and so I asked him if he could haul books on it. To make a long story short, Dave took my books (and me!) for a ride on his trailer, he put me on his teeter totter and questioned me, he made a business of hauling stuff by bike, and he’s been hauling our books ever since.
Dave took this photo of me and it is on his site with others.
16 Tons: A Twittersation
It was the last day of 2008 when Homeless Dave sent this tweet…
celebrating last bike cart delivery of 2008; http://booksbychance.com a great client; my est. tonnage for year: 16; another day older
To which I replied…
@homelessdave Yay!!! 16 tons! Wow. You’ve been incredibly reliable, hauling our books year round! Thanks!
And then Dave wrote…
@jweise 16 tons estimate based on 100 lbs x 6 days x 52 weeks; please don’t ruin fantasy by running a query
I like TN Ernie’s number
To which I simply said…
@homelessdave I like your math.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBkrAESUbyI
The thing is, I really did like Dave’s math. I was pretty sure it was right. I had to run the query on our postage log that includes the weight of every package we ship.
Packages: 23,057
Postal Bins: 2096 (2lbs each)
Tons: 16.0312
If you break it down by week, it looks like this…
If you aren’t impressed enough already by the daring feats of Homeless Dave, check out the way Dave has brought local news back home with the creation of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.
Making the Chart
This is where I diverge and show the MySQL query I used to generate the data for the chart. I estimated 11 packages per postal bin. Each postal bin weighs 2 lbs. To get totals for the year, just remove the parts that mention week, emphasized in the statement.
select week(t_create) as `week`, count(*)/11*2/2000+sum(WeightOz)/16/2000 as `tonnage`, count(*) as `packages`, count(*)/11 as `bins`, count(*)/11*2/2000 as `postal bins tons`, count(*)/11*7/2000 as `bin tons`, sum(WeightOz)/16/2000 as 'tons' from postage where year(t_create)='2008' group by week(t_create);
Tags: 16 tons, 2008, hauling by bike, shipping