BELFRY — Wednesday marked 30 days since Jim Amadon had his life flipped upside down, when a FedEx trailer slammed into his workshop on Christmas night, leaving him unemployed and searching for resolution.
"He just lost control coming around the curve. We watch every truck that comes around that curve now," said Amadon, owner of Amadon's Wood Works on Wednesday.
Christmas day is generally a great day, full of surprises. Unfortunately, this surprise was not a good one for Amadon.
"The trailers hit the house. The tractor ended up at the end of the big hole over here on the side of the house. The hole is where the fuel tanks were, and the guard rail ruptured the fuel tanks, and there was just diesel fuel pouring out of the bottom of them. It moved the house six feet off the foundation. The entire house," added Amadon.
Amadon and his family had just gone to bed after celebrating Christmas Day together when the crash happened, and life hasn't come back to normal.
"I’m out of business. I don’t have any place to finish my furniture, display it, to have people come pick it up, nothing. I’m done until they get me a building to work out of," Amadon added.
He says he lost all of his inventory, and when you add that to the building at 11 Jackson Lane and his time, he says the compensation could be north of $250,000.
On Wednesday, Hansers Automotive in Billings was given the approval to move contaminated soil that was soaked in diesel fuel off his property. FedEx responded to MTN in December and said they would contact all parties involved. An involvement Amadon says has been fleeting.
"I haven’t heard a word from them. The last communication I got was Dec. 30 that said, 'We understand your property may have been damaged during a FedEx delivery.' That’s what I’ve heard from anybody," Amadon said.
That changed Wednesday after MTN reached out to FedEx seeking a comment. No one from the company would speak with MTN but after the call, a company representative did reach out to Amadon to schedule a meeting Thursday with an insurance appraiser.
But to Amadon, this unexpected event has drug on way too long.
"You spend seven years working on this, building a business up here, and it’s wiped out in the blink of an eye, and they don’t care," Amadon said.
