It was only 200 years ago, or so, that for any implement you may require, you would commision a local craftsman to craft it for you. You need a wagon wheel? Visit a local tradesman. You need leather shoes? Visit a local tradesman. You need soup bowl? Visit a local tradesman.
Fast forward to 2020. Everything that you may require is sold by Amazon and sourced, most likely, from a factory in China. And this factory churns out at least a million copies of your wheel/shoe/bowl, all 100% identical to each other.
Imagine, if you will, you are a Ferry service with a billion dollar revenue. Surely, every little cog in your billion dollar machine is some factory-spec item that is ordered from some sort of industrial product catalogue.
Or... is it?
Behold these quaint looking implements. Stacked ply-wood, hand-painted in orange, and stapled to a belt. I can guarantee you, these definitely do not look like they were sourced from Alibaba or Amazon.
They may not look like much, but you will be hard-pressed to safely park a motorcycle on the deck of a Ferry without it. Especially if said Ferry would sail the open sea.
The chock looks to be as old as the Ferry itself, which would make it a 1993 chock. But just imagine for a second, how the Ferry corporation got hold of these. Surely, a local handyman was at some point tasked with fabricating these chocks, simply because an Amazon/Alibaba search yielded 0 results. Just too niche to be manufactured according to factory spec. Simply bang out a few of these when you need them. I wonder who the local BC carpenter was that put these together, and if he will get a replacement order in the next maintenance cycle.
Just because they are so delightfully quant, one more chock:
