Tired men Horses, hoist, gin poles, ramps that reversed direction side to side up a building, and what else? Funny to look back at old pictures and see how it was done. When forklifts first came out the salesman was trying to sell my fathers bricklayer foreman and Lull. This was in the early 1960's at the latest. He responded to the salesman "when the machine can go through the door or window I'll buy one!"
Yeah, it's hard to imagine. But I think we can say, things were built one brick at a time, one board, one sheet, one pail, etc. We think nothing about it when we pick up a full pallet of blocks nowdays, or a whole rack of drywall, or a full stack of sheathing board. Back in the old days, its what a man/men could carry, one at a time. And to be more specific with your question about "before there were telehandlers there were?"...ag tractors with a straight mast stuck on the back of them, turned 'em around, and drove them backwards. Two wheel drive with bald tires that would spin on the slightest wet spot. Small tires on the steering axle with counterweights just above those small tires, get in a mud hole with them and they'd sink to China! Yeah, those were the days.
You have described one machine I have. It is a 1966 Lull 7-C1 with truck tires in the back. It sure beat going by and. I bought it in 1978 and basically restored it. My father told me how they took bricks off rail cars with laborers. I have many many old books on brickwork that show material handling. Now I tell a guy to guy a frame and he thinks he needs a Lull to get one frome. ointhead They did still have some good ways to handle material way back when. I'll have to post some pictures when I get time.
I remember a conversation a few months ago with a carpenter who's about my age. He had to send his crew to two different houses that day, and his guys were complaining that there was only one compressor on the truck. Somebody was actually going to have do without a nail gun! He said, "Yeah, I remember how to swing a hammer all day, but these guys have never done that." I hear that the cavemen actually had to lay their sewer pipe without using lasers. (But I don't believe it...)
ointhead .....birds...planes..... No...its The Chamberlain BHB of course. The supreme King of No Brakes and Work Place Safety Violations.... But they did a hell of a job.
I remember kneeling on top of a truck load of bricks taking every sixth brick out and putting those in fives. The adults could grab 5 bricks at a time, it really speeded things up alot when unloading a truck. Bear in mind that once unloaded and stacked they would have to be handballed at least once more into the front bucket of the digger when they were needed for manhole building, :yup pre concrete ring days I had started operating by the time packs of bricks were being delivered. Sites had no way of unloading them, :Banghead it was easier and more productive for the factories but no forklifts on most sites and definetly no lorry mounted cranes. Then I found out what those short scaffold tubes were for with a couple of lengths of chain .......... Christ we'd get hung today for even thinking of doing some of the things we used to do. :ban
I remember when having a set of forks that hung on the loader bucket was the greatest thing since sliced bread..... When I was a laborer, I could rig anything in the world if there was enough chain around and a friendly operator. Didn't have a clue what I was doing..... Knew for sure that machine was stronger than my back, though. Had some good operators save my rear end, too.
In our case it would have been the fork, hand and then foreloader. Dad loves telling me how before they got a foreloader they had to clean out the sheds by hand. At one point a guy comes along trying to get my grandad to sign up as a member of the land owners association and asks to speak to the governor to which he replied "do you think he'd be doing this job." The first loadeer I think they had was on either a Ford or David Brown (I remember them having one on a DB but that was their second one I think and I'm not sure if they had one on a ford before the first DB