When I moved across the country almost 5 years ago I had help loading my trailer. A gallon jug of the devil's piss (as I now call it) was picked up from the "does not get loaded" pile and loaded on my trailer. I had help unloading, and then again I had help moving a few miles to a different house.
Keep in mind, during all this time I was sick and could not work much at all so I rarely used my stuff.
Well, at this new place I was renting I had only one outbuilding at the time. So I put the tools I used the most in that building and stored the rest outdoors. I spread out a good tarp, set everything on it, pulled up the edges of the tarp, and then covered it all with two decent quality tarps. A year and a half went by. (Remember, I was sick and could hardly work so I didn't need access to that stuff.)
I had bought a pile of stuff from the estate of an old plumber who had passed away. Besides my tools, I had a ton of good stuf from that purchase that I was going to use and a ton of stuff that I was going to sell on eBay to help pay the bills until I could work full time again. (I still can't work full time.)
One day I was walking past this pile and noticed some holes in the tarp. Curious, I walked over and touched it. It disintegrated to the touch.
My stomach knotted up. I started pulling the tarp back. It was all ruined. And I mean ruined. I don't mean rusty and ugly, I mean destroyed.
I was flabbergasted until I found a crate with this gallon jug of the devil's piss laying on it's side. A half gallon of this stuff had leaked out. The tarp acted like a vapor tent and the sun baked it good. I had not even known it came along. I had purposely set it aside as there was no way I would ever haul it with my stuff.
A brand new drum with 100' of brand new Ridgid 3/4" cable.
A complete set of Ridgid pipe wrenches, two of each size from 6" to 36", plus a couple of those straight Ridgid pipe wrenches.
A $1,600 camera for inspecting furnaces.
Over a dozen Kohler chrome cast brass P-Traps plus another $2,800 worth (wholesale) of Kohler stuff. (All this was from that estate.)
Pretty much every specialty tool I owned.
I could go on and on with the list but it's making my stomach knot up again. This only happened last summer and I am still not over the shock or the financial loss. I figure I took an income hit of around $5,000 and a tool loss of around $4,000 at a time when I was living on about $1,200 per month.
I am still sick about it.