Once upon a time I worked for a fairly major corporation, and a large part of my job was doing equipment repair. This is where I got my ASE certifications, back in the day. We spent a lot of time working on tractors and dozers and cars and trucks that were in the company’s fleet.

One of the very few perks of this job was the ability to be allowed to borrow the truck, which was a geriatric GMC flatbed. On many occasions Co-workers and I would use it to haul stuff or do side gigs.

Once we had borrowed it to haul some garbage, and one of the conditions was that we’d haul an old engine to the recyclers. We had swapped out the diesel in a little skidsteer, and the old diesel was in it’s crate wating to be scrapped. It had a crack in the block, so was worthless as a core, it was noisy and burned oil like a steam locomotive.

We hauled our garbage and dropped it off, and were going to take the engine to the recycler in the morning, and we cut the corner a little too sharp, in a remote rural town where we had spent the evening carousing. The engine, crate and all, slid off the back of the truck and landed, somewhat the worse for wear, in the middle of the intersection.

We scratched our heads a bit. We were pretty hammered. we had no crane. It was the wee hours of the morning, and this was the one and only stoplight in a remote town. So we did what any reasonable people woiuld do.

We took a five gallon can of diesel, a piece of garden hose and some tape, and used the truck’s jumper cables to start the engine.
We left it running in the street.

And then we ran like the hounds of hell were after us.

I never did find out what happened to the engine. We gave our boss the $28 in scrap the engine would have brought him, so he was none the wiser.