How To: Buy Rocks

I know it's soon to talk about another house supply story, but I wanted to share another experience I had today when buying rock. Apparently I need a lot of rocks. These rocks are pieces of mountain broken down to slightly larger than a softball. A large dump truck holds about 1,000.

So I arrived at the quarry (this one in Santa Elena because all the other quarries break up their rocks to make gravel and won't sell them to you) and walked around for about 10 minutes before I finally was spotted by a guard. He came very close to rolling down the mountain of gravel with shotgun in hand, but luckily he caught himself all 4 times and made it down on his feet. Together we looked for the guy in charge.

While walking around I explained what I needed and asked him about the prices. The neat thing about guards is that they notice prices, but don't get caught up in ripping you off because they don't really care how much extra the boss gets. I was told that a double load costs Q600.

We finally found the guy who informed me right away that the double load costs Q1100 and is not really a double load, but 1200 rocks instead of 900 rocks. Now I know that they do not take the time to count out every rock, and the guard had just told me that a single load was Q300 and a double load Q600. He is at this point looking for a spot to pee while staying in ear shot so he can see if I'm going to get him in trouble.

I whistled at the high price and asked if that included delivery. One sign you are getting ripped off is if they say that other things are included. The fair price is one thing, and all the extras cost more. He assured me that that included everything and they would leave tomorrow at 7am.

I told him that I had heard from my friends (thus making the guard both my new friend and plural at the same) that the price shouldn't be more than Q600. This time he whistled and told me that he would be losing money to sell it to me at that price. Keep in mind that this is another tactic. His rocks are free. He just breaks them off of the mountain on his property.

I had the advantage on this one by knowing the fair price, so I held firm on the Q600, but ended up paying a little more than I should have for transportation and ended up at Q800 for the rocks and delivery 20 minutes away. Now I have to ask one of my workers to count rocks because I insisted (as I have with all the materials that I've bought lately) that I only pay for what is actually delivered.

My mason told me that I shouldn't buy rocks. He said that it is much easier and cheaper to find somebody with a mountain on their property and ask how much to buy the mountain. Then all I have to do is pay some guys to break up the mountain into little rocks, then hire some big trucks to take it to my property, then pay some guys to unload those trucks. Somehow he thinks that is cheaper than the $100 I just spent. I tried explaining that time is money, but that did not translate culturally.