After waiting for what seemed like the entire winter, my Future Steel Garage went up in less than a week. This was the building site in February.
After the snow melted the building site looked like this.
Future Steel Buildings delivered the building to me at the end of April. I was impressed with how they were able to package a 16 x 40 building. It arrived on basically two pallets, one for the building, and one for the base plate connectors. Luckily, I was able to arrange with our local Co-op, the use of their forklift to lift the pallets off of the truck. Otherwise, I would have been responsible for lifting the building off of the truck piece by piece and by hand. This is what the delivered building looked like. It is hard to believe from looking at it that it would become a 16 x 40 building.
In all, the delivery process went well. There was good communication with Future Steel the entire time. They do give a deadline for when the building has to be delivered and that may or may not fit with a builder’s time frame, but in my case it worked. Also, the way the building is packaged is such that it can be stored for a lengthy time (provided you don’t have to disturb the packaging by hand lifting off of the truck. As you can see the factory strapping is still on the building after unloading).
One part of the delivery process that I was not a big fan of, is that the balance of payment is due by bank draft at the time of delivery. I understand Future Steel wanting payment before delivery, but there are a couple of problems with this method:
1. Bank drafts are a pain. I had to order my draft well in advance of delivery. It cost me extra to have the draft drawn up. Your bank account is debited immediately and if something happens to the draft you could essentially be out that money.
2. Given the time of delivery, there was no way I was going to open up the packaging to see if everything arrived. I had to “eye ball” it and trust that every piece was there. Future Steel does give some time to report if anything is missing (I think it is 60 days), but there was no way I was going to have the building up before that time expired. Fortunately everything was there.
I think it would be good policy to allow for a 5 percent hold back until the building is actually erected to ensure customer satisfaction (As an alternative I would have gone for a cash incentive for early payment). As I will write about later, I wasn’t terribly enthused about the skylights I ordered, but I had absolutely no recourse. This is a small detail though. Overall delivery and communication with Future Steel was excellent.
Next Up: The Foundation
Backyard Building 
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