Please share your stories of close calls when operating a medium dozer, or lowbedding, or even just standing by. I hope to hear some good stories. I will tell you one of my favorites. One time, we were loading a TD15C on a lowbed. We had just sold it, and the new owner sent out some hotshot equipment operator, still wet behind the ears, and we had ourselves a rodeo. Being my assigned machine, I was asked to bring it from the shed to the lowbed. The kid decided to park the truck facing down hill, on a 4% grade. Being responsible, before I handed him the keys, I performed a perfect shutdown. Set the park brake, put the blade down, and finally shut the engine off. He took the keys,and hopped on. Got it on the trailer, set the park brake, but failed to put the blade down. He got off, turned his back, and the park brake decided to come off. It went down the hill, took out 50 feet on beautiful fence, before coming to a crash with the truck, parked about 60 feet away. He got it back on the trailer, carefully setting the blade down, then hooked up the neck to the deck of the lowbed. As he completed the final step, and rolled the lowbed neck back up the frame to the fifth wheel. Being shoddy equipment, the trailer brakes decided to give out with all the weight on them. It pushed the truck down the hill for about a foot before coming to a stop. Anyhoo, there's my story. Hope to hear yours.
30 years ago, and only a month before our wedding, I was clearing some timber on a little stick shift Fiat dozer. When backing up, the corner of the canopy caught the top of a previously felled tree and directed it inside. With the tractor still going back, the broken branch hooked me under the earhole and lifted me out of the seat. Luckily, I was able to throw the clutch while it was still in reach. At the time, I was wearing a hard hat with integrated ear muffs, and when I finally fell back on the seat, the helmet was still wedged by the branch against the opposite side of the canopy. Only needed some stitches and a night in hospital, but to this day I still have one ear that sticks out at a weird angle.
1. Loading a Lull forklift on a lowboy in a downpour thunderstorm and couldn't really see for the rain. Didn't get it straight enough on the trailer and over it went. I managed to jump clear from it. 2. Trying to pull hoses back onto the rear sheave of a manlift. Had my arm around the hoses and a guy operating the boom extension so I could pull them on against the spring. As the book was going out, my hand got caught up between the hoses and sheave, and of course the operator wasn't watching or listening for me. Kept going out and I just knew my arm was going to get pulled off. Luckily, my screaming overcame the sound of the machine engine. 3. Fiat dozer broke down pushing dirt halfway up a 40 degree incline. I could barely park my truck on the incline, but did.....and proceeded to tilt the cab. Found the torque convertor screen housing bolt broken and made the repair. Had the operator get on the machine with the cab still tilted and start it because I wanted to check for leaks. As soon as it started, the brakes released.....while I was laying on the track. It immediately started rolling down the hill, but I managed to get thrown to the side of the track. Air hose got caught in the grouser and ripped my reel off the truck. I was about 6 inches from getting thrown off the track behind the dozer and having that dam thing run over me. All this was over 25 years ago......I've gotten a lot smarter since then.
I was about 16 yrs old, in a pit dug down about 5' ready to receive a horizontal boring machine that I estimate weighed about 1000-1200lbs & as the 580 Case was swinging over the pit to lower the boring machine, the chain slipped or became unhooked & down the boring machine came...………. the sharp corner frame of the machine tore about a 2" wide strip on the one leg of my coveralls about 24" long as the machine came crashing into the hole, but luckily I didn't have a scratch on me!! That was close!
I was packing corn silage on my D3. Came to the end of the pit, where the silage was already a couple feet above the concrete walls. Went to put in into reverse, and somehow manage to miss both reverse 1 and 2, and find a neutral. Over the edge of the pit we went. It wasn't supper high. Maybe 10-12ft drop. My face smacked the grab bar on top of the dash, causing 4 busted teeth, and of course a bunch of fractures. The seat belt saved my life. This all happened in the blink of and eye. Not fun.
about 30 years or so ago was digging post holes with a ford 8N and 3 pt. auger. Ground was bone dry and the going was slow with dry loose dirt coming out of the hole(and falling back in). I was standing off to the side of the tractor operating the auger up and down with the lift lever. Me being a dumb azz decided to reach down and scoop away said loose dirt with my hands while i left the PTO engaged...BAD IDEA. I had some cheapo half tore up arm length welding leather gloves on. Well i got too close to the PTO shaft and in an instant a part of the glove farther up my arm wrapped around the shaft and instantly my forearm slammed into the shaft and promptly ripped most of that glove off my arm!...with leaving me with just a hell of a big bruise on my forearm. BUT i still had my arm!!!. I fell backwards and double checked that my arm was still intact. I sat there for a couple of minutes thanking the lord that i was still alive and in one piece!!! NEVER did a stupid **** thing like that again!!!
I know of a local guy who borrowed his brothers tractor /auger to do post holes & there was a long bolt holding the auger to the drive. He got wrapped up in the long bolt & his poor wife came home from shopping a hr or two later & found him going around with the auger!!! Very sad...….
None of us should be alive... We get too soon old, and too late smart !!!
The one near-miss I had on a dozer was while brush-raking. I was backing up when a 4" log I didn't see poked under the fuel tank and went between my legs. Another time I was snowplowing our driveway when I went over some snow I did not realize was already over the edge of the road. Thankfully it was a short, shallow slope so I did not flip over, and I was wearing a seatbelt. Had to do a little bushwacking to get out. Mom told me one of her uncles was winching up a load of logs on grandpa's 7U D4 when a trunk bumped up against the canopy and started squashing the canopy flat like a tin can. He was able to stop the winch, but he had to drive up to the house for help because he was stuck on the machine. Grandpa had to unbolt and remove the canopy to get him out. This same uncle also once tossed a used match after lighting a cigarette into a empty gas barrel and blew it up. He sounded a little like a walking disaster.
A few years ago I was running a D7E pushing out a hedge row. One tree was being difficult, and fell partly toward the dozer and a jaged limb was pointing over the hood towards the seat. I went to shift into reverse just as a stiff hedge branch snaked up and pushed back on the shift lever, threatening to push it into 3rd forward. I was just barely able to push the lever forward enough to get into neutral . Might not have ended well.
Recently,I've been watching a lot of DOZER ACCIDENTS on YouTube. Some of the stupid ones involve loading crawlers onto truck beds that are at silly angles & near cliffs & depressions. It's very sobering to watch guys rolling cranes,loaders,excavators,etc .....& a great reminder to be aware of your surrounds & abilities.
That reminds me ……...once in my teen years I was running a 941 track loader digging a basement under a house & there were were soft conditions, when travelling ahead to fill the bucket under the house the back of the machine reared up & one of the cribbing beams that was running across the basement under the floor came up against my chest, pinning me back against the seat & the shifter became out of reach as my chest & shoulders was being pulled back & I was barely was able to reach to pop it out of gear...…...close one that time too!
My worst offence.... we had a Versatile bi-directional (farm tractor). "Back in the day", it was standard practice to skip the radio option (if there even was one), and bolt some salvaged AM radio somewhere that it fit. Turns out that on this tractor, the only halfway handy place was on the sidepost, dead center of the cab. As a teen, driving down the road (at full speed, so as to not anger the father with a delay), I turned my head around backwards to tune a different station. As an articulated tractor, you have no feel for when you're going to the edge of the gravel road (coincidentally, at the deepest part of the ditch...) Net result, one tractor on its side with a crooked cab. And a level of guilt that I'm sure would qualify me as a top-notch Catholic, which lead to a selfless work ethic that has served me well ever since... (as dad has pointed out a few times, he paid for an education, and all of my employers after that reaped the benefits!) One story that I'm a wee bit shy to tell 'out of school'... friend of mine was a heavy mechanic. Hired out of school as the only wrench on a remote road-building crew. Had to do some work on a big Cat - D7 or D8. He had to remove the bellhousing. He didn't want to let it just fall to the ground, so he got the notion to keep that from happening - by running a chain through the bellhousing, and around his shoulder. Apparently, some time after the last bolt came out, he awoke with an awful headache and a new respect for just how much that hunk of iron weighs.... Luckily, no missing teeth, no fractured skull, no body parts under the bellhousing!! danr
There is a really great old safety "film" out there called "Shake Hands With Danger". It shows how a lot of accidents/close calls, can happen. Some of the film is actually pretty funny, but it makes the point. I used to show it every year at our various mine safety classes. The guy always enjoyed it, even though most had watched it many times You can find it on Youtube. It is worth watching.
My MSHA training instructor also shares that video from time to time. You can clearly see it's an old "film" but the points are timeless.
Local contract company lost one of the owners several years ago. We had been working a levee repair as got toward dark, moved a old 750 Deere to a lo-boy loaded tied down and proceeded to drive out. He slipped the right duals into a ditch hanging the trailer up so decided would unload and then move it all forward to flatter ground. Long story short, unchained, got on the machine, put in gear and as soon as bumped slipped off sideways, he had failed to use the seat belt, pitched him onto the ground while the machine continued to slow roll, the ROP frame crushed him. He was found a few hours later as a neighbor became concerned the truck headlights were on and nothing was moving for hours called the man's brother who drove down and found him. Second one; Contractor from my childhood was called on to dig a pond, cash deal and some miles away from their known home of operations. The new pond to be land owner and his brood along with myself and a brother went out to watch as well play around the farm for the weekend. Saturday morning well before first light the first tractor trailer and rubber tire Cat showed up, unloaded then high tailed it BACK in the direction ha just came from. Soon enough the second truck, empty, showed where the first truck then had the D7 on it that should have been on the second truck. Seems there was a slight tweak to the ROP system, there was sod and mud hanging off the ROP system, a few track shoes had seen a little issue and the stack was bent. Story came out, had loaded both on Friday, slipped past scale on secondary back roads to avoid fines for Overweight oversize where also at the time OS OW loads were NOT permitted on weekends or during hours of dark(1/2 hour before sunrise to 1/2 hour after M-F ONLY), their day for the weekend had started at 2am. The trip started uneventful, got to a hard 'S' curve set of turns next to a creek where was moving a little fast, the stressed left side of TWO(2) 3/8' chains that were normally used to retain the machine on local hauls across the rear sheared, the machine slipped sideways off the trailer shearing the second and proceeded to gouge its way rolling thru the brush down thru and on the bank to land in the creek upright wiping out a line of small trees, a lot of soil and making a ROYAL mess. The driver got on the machine as well the radio and called for help as machine did start. He had no other chains, he also noted the tie downs were sheared away with floor damage. The first truck was needed so went back where they loaded OFF THE COUNTY ROAD No mats or tire cushions, and hauled butt to the job site. Worked that pair of machines two full days, built two small ponds then loaded up and left late Sunday. The State never reported the locating of the culprits for the highway and creek bank damage but none the less the SAME contractor received contract to repair that section of ditch bank and aided in getting the road pavement fixed. Miraculously the State and the County of the accident received some New cars Donated by the SAME contractor. That D7 ran for several more years, still bent and beat up, a reminder to ALL the boys that hauled as to what can happen until was traded in.
That "Shake Hands" movie was always shown back in the day at our annual safety dinners. Some of the scenes were not something you wanted to watch after eating a big steak dinner! Lucky no one ever lost their supper!
I know I have posted this other places on this forum but this seems like a good place to store it! I was in the process of building a new two car garage with a shop bay on one end. Had all the walls up and maybe a third of the trusses. Wife and I had lifted those up by hand on to the 10 foot walls. I got the idea that we could save a bit of work if I asked the boss to let me take the little Koehring Bantam hydraulic truck crane home for the weekend. See my house was just a mile down the road from the quarry so boss said sure just don't get a ticket as crane was not licenced. Friday at the end of the day I jumped in the Koehring and took off down the road. Pulled in the drive and backed up about half way between where truss company had dropped the trusses and the end wall of the garage. Just for the heck of it I decided to double check to see if I was in a good spot to reach trusses and the garage. Boomed up the crane and swung hook over the stake or trusses. Look about perfect! Then swung boom over to the garage, I was a bit away from the center of garage so boomed out a bit to be sure I could reach the far end wall. Well anyone who has been listening recalls there was no mention of out riggers being put down so the result is obvious! Boom slowly comes down chopping the half dozen already installed trusses along with the west end wall right in to and putting a small dent in the slab floor. A quick look and I decided that there was no more damage to be done to the garage structure, so I boomed down to get the truck crane close to level then put out the outriggers so I could then lift the crane boom off the garage. A few 2X4's did no damage to the Koehring! Put boom back in the cradle and drove the crane back to the shop! Figured I had a few days work before I'd be putting up trusses again. Did manage to salvage the majority of the parts of the damaged trusses by using one of the new ones as a pattern to lay them on and using scrap pieces of plywood to replace the steel plates they had been made with at the factory. One thing that made this whole fiasco even worse was that Friday night we were going out to dinner with two other couples. One couple the guy was one of the best known crane operators in this part of the state and years latter he was the guy who trained my future boss on operating cranes. Oh! and yes we put the trusses up by hand once we had the damaged ones fixed!
Many years ago I was doing some bush-clearing using an old powerhift D8H with no cab or ROPS, just a sunshade. I wasn't paying too much attention, just following the instructions of the surveyor who back then was equipped with nothing more complex than a magnetic compass and a ranging staff. Uniform was usual African-style, shorts, short/no-sleeved shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap. Well I knocked over a fairly large tree that just happened to have a nest of African killer bees in it. They very quickly made me well aware that they didn't take kindly to my home-wrecking antics by stinging the bejasus out of me. Apparently according to those who witnessed it, when I bailed out over the back of the diesel tank of the tractor it seemed as though my legs were going at 100mph while they were still 6 feet off the ground. I had the presence of mind to slap the transmission control into neutral and hit the governor lever all in a split second before I exited stage left so the tractor just stopped and sat there idling, fortunately the ground was pretty flat. Luckily for me the tractor only had a towbar on it and not a ripper so I didn't end up impaled on one of the shanks.......!!
Reminds me of a time I asked to take a company boom truck home to do a little work. I was to drive it back the next morning. It was an old clunker, I did not want to take the good one. Well I got there and did the work. Parked it for the night. Got up the next morning to go to work and it would not start. It had an auto crane with that crazy complicated battery system. I poked and prodded but I could not figure out what was wrong with it. I was needed in person at work more than the old clunker so somehow I got another ride and they sent a tow truck after the clunker. The boss never said anything about it but I am sure he was not happy. Moral of the story, never take a work vehicle home, it will always break at the worst possible moment and make you look like a jerk.
Worst experience ever had, SMALL machine, old fixed position Hotsy pressure washer in the shop I worked at Tulsa. Damned pilot ALWAYS going out but had a automatic relight system, situated WAY too close to the roll up door but handy as well, also had a problematic damper system on it for the exhaust thru the shop roof. Went to do some serious cleaning on a DOWELL SVCS Rig, No heat also NO oily crap moving so go and check, hood cold, look under the machine and FOOM!! The auto igniter for the pilot lit it off and ALL the gas hanging in the flue as the electric damper was STILL CLOSED as No Fire lit off. SOAB! Did NOT need a haircut for close to six weeks, DID NOT have eyebrows or a mustache and one hell of a sunburn, at least Had Been wearing my favorite hat, hair atop my head and It too survived but singed. Freaking machine got four others when the manager had enough and had it replaced.
I always showed it right after lunch. It helped wake the guys up after a big lunch, that's for sure.
Thank you mowingman for bringing it up, and Dave for posting a link. Growing up, I heard my dad talk about seeing that video several times, but I wasn't old enough at the time to go with him to the saftey meetings. I had always wished I could see it, and here we are. Boy would it be nice if a guy could go back in time and run those machines when they were that shiny.
The trouble with bailing out during a bee attack is that someone has to get back on the machine to shift the darn thing. If you have time, you can wait till they settle down a bit and quickly sneak aboard. Sometimes while pulling, we’ve resorted to stretching the chain out and towing the machine backwards, sans operator, with the other tractor.
What we did was pile up a heap of brush in an already-cleared area maybe 50 yards upwind of the tractor and then set fire to it. The smoke drifted down over the tractor, the bees took the huff and left, at least they left far enough for someone to get on it and move it away from the fallen tree.
Interesting accounts! When I was about 11, on a solo sod rolling mission about a block from home, I was happily win-rowing sod to the left with a John Deere 2010. I had been taught by Dad to get off and get back from the machine, kneel down and take a look at what you were doing. I decided to make the obligatory check right after I had rolled up a in-ground yellow jacket nest. I hopped off the machine right in to the middle of a very unhappy bunch of campers! All decorum was lost as I took off sprinting shedding my pants as I was running. It was a non stop sprint to house! Probably the worst dozer adventure was with a D10 N in AZ. I was pushing off the outside edge on like the 4100 level and found a huge rock that survived the blasters anfo massage. I am pushing and digging and working different angles around it. When it finally started to give. I leaned on it hard... as it rolled out a piece of it rolled out of the ground and hooked the edge or the back of the blade. As the three of us the rock, the Cat and I were making our way to the bitter edge one of us was a blur of activity trying to get off the rock and back the freak up! The rock came clear and headed for the basement at a high rate of speed. It left me stopped on the edge, as I got my s*&% together I looked out over top of the right front track and noticed 2000 feet of daylight which was very interesting to me. Never has reverse been selected so gently and decelerator released so carefully. I can still recall the noise of the trans pumps as reverse was selected and wondering why in the hell we weren't backing up yet!
Any time someone mentions Rock + D10 in the same sentence it always reminds me of this ........
You were there! I failed to notice you and your camera! LOL
And here is what happens when you are working two shifts and one of the night shift drivers forgets to push the lever to the left of the seat all the way forward. Cat came out of it a bit better than the conveyor but did some damage to hoses! Those were the big cooler hoses to the rear brake so lost a bit of oil right fast! Just remembered another detail that would qualify this as a close call. Look in the next picture where the arrow points to the power pole for the three phase power to the primary crusher! It was touching !
OOOPS!! Quarries were always congested awkward places to be in with the old end dumps.
True, even after working there for 45 years I always felt a bit uncomfortable after dark. Things change so much when you loose all the peripheral vision in the dark! That long conveyor that goes off to the right in the picture was one of the first projects I helped assemble back in summer of 1968, actually helped dig the holes for the supports with a jack hammer after driller bored a bunch of holes in the bedrock! Out of the picture to the right is the surge pile with a 10 foot corrugated steel "tunnel" under it that was another of the projects I worked on that summer.
Spring and fall were always sticky white lime mess then came the dry of summer so dusty the lime would bury the paint on machines, and good old frozen winter, no starts, hard starts, air systems froze up, hydraulics watered and frozen and the conveyors all iced up. Seems whenever it snowed much I was sent home or called at home and told NOT to come in for a few days, let the mess erupt and would clean it all up in better weather. I was only part time and bounced quarry to quarry as a semi-contractor mechanic. Still remember when the quarries around me sold out, where I had a few projects in varied states, the same company took them all over in a matter of months then the NEW Manager foreskin came to me told me I was no longer needed and could just pack up and leave when I was ready. Dropped the parts in hand to the dirt and loaded my stuff, had a old Euc 6/110 DD partly assembled, as stated dropped the parts I had in hand to the DIRT floor and walked out where that old Euc was never finished ended up sold for scrap. The 'Old Guys' that worked the pit trucks would only have brakes once in awhile, most of the old haul trucks had DEEP scars on their sides from dragging along the haul road/ramp cut wall to keep from losing speed control with NO brakes, once in awhile one would get away, could hear the screeching then the CRUNCH and finally SPLASH as they found the wet spot at the pit bottom past the big shot rocks.
Off topic a bit but where we are located it stays cold and snowy enough from about the middle of November till about the middle of April to make trying to produce stone pretty much unprofitable. So production more or less stops for those months most of the time. I won't say we never ran anything that was a bit borderline on safety but at least management was not too bad to deal with in those regards. Had one boss in the shop that was a first class tightwad, but one thing he never gave me any grief about was the seats in any machine that came through the shop. He said if a man has to sit in that machine for 8 to 10 hours or more he needs a good seat. Guess it helps as he had a bit of a bad back himself!
Old crusher shed structure looks as could use a little TLC prior to the incident.
Yea the corrugated tin had seen better days, build up of spillage causing it to rust pretty bad! Accident happened in 2009 and that screen/crusher tower was erected in 1967 so no surprising there was a bit of rusting going on! I believe that big flap to the left of the head pulley was ripped open from the accident.
Could only watch about 2/3 of that. Stomach not the issue, I don’t mind the blood, I just can’t stand watching one train wreck after another with the apprehension of how bad is this one going to be as you see it coming! When I was about 12 was visiting my cousins, my uncle was doing custom yard prep for new homes. He had an old tractor and a disk he would tow around to break up the ground a bit. Well the bricks n rocks he had piled on it were not enough weight, so my two cousins said, hop on the disk, so all three of us are riding the disk behind the tractor, he hit a big rock on my side flipped me off, n under the disk I went, they yelled loud enough he got it stopped at my shoulders! And luckily both my cousins were a couple years older n bigger and had enough adrenaline and strength to take some of the weight off till my uncle could give them a hand! I thought it was stupid at the start, my Dad had raised me to look out for stupid stuff!BUT cousins goad you into stupid stuff!!
I think you're maybe missing the point....... All those reconstructions in the movie were of actual events that happened at some time in the dim & distant past. First time I saw SHWD was probably late 70's so it was a while ago now. However the message then and the message now differ very little, at least IMHO. If nothing else the whole message of the movie is that what God gave you between the ears is the best PPE you'll ever be issued with. Everyone's got the same and if someone chooses not to use it, well here's a few examples of the consequences and how easily they can turn round and bite your ***. There couldn't be a better cue for "Here's Your Sign"....
I got the point, and after that incident 42 years ago, I don’t let any one talk me into anything, or start any job without a thorough evaluation of what might go wrong and get me. I have only had stitches once in my working career, and it was so minor that if I had been at home I would have taped it up n called it good.
Just recalled another one and picture below is out of the same group the truck hitting the conveyor came from. If you look at that tower that is holding up the conveyor pointing straight away from you you see the big "X" braces. As I recall they are about 2 1/2 to 3 inch angle iron. We were in the process of assembling that tower with it laying flat on it side. A couple guys, one was the boss's son Gary, were up on the side of the tower laying on the ground and they were installing one of those big X braces. They were bolted together where they crossed in the center. Gary, the boss's son was trying to line up the holes to install the bolts holing the angle to the legs. As I recall it he had dropped a wrench or line-up punch and asked me to get it a toss it up to him. Just as I step inside the legs of the tower he decides to give the X brace a smack with a hammer. As he does that the X shifts just off the edge of the tab it was to be bolted to and proceeds to rotate down right at me. I actually was not aware of what was happening but did feel something smack me on the top of hard hat and bounce off just to the right of my shoulder. My first thought was someone had dropped a bolt or something. Gary on the other hand from what I recall people telling me thought for a minute I was going to be dead! As it was the fact that the X was fairly close to being balanced with the leg that hit me only being a few inches longer than the opposite end there was not much force to deal with and only a very minor scratch in the old fiberglass hard hat! Had both legs of the X on that side fell ove the ending might have been different and you would not be reading about it here!