This is an incident which happened last week. We're installing an 8" sewer main with 6" service laterals in a mobile home park with precious little maneuvering room. Being under the gun to complete this project has our Foreman thinking not-so-clearly. Mostly I'm having to use the excavator to do the backfilling because with the wellpoint header pipe and trench with a road directly adjacent we simply don't have room to use the loader. Our Foreman decided he would attempt the loader anyway, driving up the road directly adjacent to the trench he thought he could turn just enough to dump the bucket mostly in the trench. Well, as you can imagine once he pivoted the loader the left front tire crushed the pavement and headed south and quickly into the trench. This is a Volvo L70E, not a light loader by any means and with 3.5cy bucket heaped full with very moist and heavy fill (Isaac had just dumped a lot of rain on the project). Once I noticed the inevitable happening I swung the excavator and extended the bucket out to stop the loader from tipping all the way over and surely killing our Foreman who refuses to wear the seatbelt. I was able to reach the top of the ROPS with the bucket which did stop the loaders trenchward slide. Our Foreman was a shade or three colors whiter and surely needed a change of underwear by this point as well. I quickly assessed the situation and realized the only way out of this was to dump the bucket on the road to take the weight off the front end. I tried to hand signal this to the Foreman but he was in somewhat a panic and thought better to get out of the perilously balanced machine. To my utter surprise and dismay he exited the loader from the side which was tipping into the trench, ***! To make a longer story short I had the Pipe Layer, a relatively competent excavator Operator hold the bucket against the loaders ROPS until I could get to the controls of the machine. Yes, I accessed the cab from the right side through the thankfully lowered window NOT the left which was falling into the trench. A simple yet slow raise of the loader boom just enough to have the bucket clear enough to dump was all it took to keep the machine from sliding further into the trench. Now to get the darn thing free of the huge hole it had created. With the excavator at the ready to support the loader I slowly raised the bucket above the dumped fill set the bucket floor on the pile, raised the front up which transfered the weight to the rear and backed out saving the machine at least but clearly not the huge hole and now missing pavement. The Foreman seemed surprised how easy it appeared to free the loader from its predicament and gave me an attaboy! Seriously, all I wanted to do was bitch slap him but just smiled, shook my head and walked away. Unbelievable! Surely he'll make President of the company by the end of the year. Anyone else have any similar stories of loaders on the verge of going down or rolling over due to an idiot at the controls? I just wish I would have had a GoPro to have caught this whole mess on camera...
Foreman is obviously not very familiar with the workings of an articulated front end loader, eh?
Clearly, NO! Best he stick with what he's good at, which other than running the vibratory compactor in a straight line I'm not entirely sure what that is. Personally I think he has a death wish, who in their right mind would exit anything from the side which is sliding into a 12' deep hole? He's in fair shape but I'm not sure even he could bench press 15t, who knows maybe he eats Wheaties washed down with canned spinach every morning.
That's a good story, and a good catch. Glad he didn't rip you for scratching the ROPS while saving his sorry rear end. I was on a job cutting a slope down to the edge of a lake. We were loading artic trucks side by side, backing in, as it was pretty tight. We were leaving about a 8' high berm on the lake side, but one time, the berm and half the road slid while the outside truck was getting loaded. The hoe operator was good and fast. He seen it going, grabbed the side of the truck and held it up while all the dirt slid out from under the outside tires. Fortunately it was only under the box, not the cab too. A very scared driver worked with the hoe to walk the truck out to solid ground. Working around slopes is dangerous, and add water to the toe, it ramps up the danger to a whole new level.
Yeah it's a real good thing he didn't rip in to me about tooth marks on the ROPS, but since he drove over the forks about two weeks ago and did $1200 worth of damage to the loader he really needs to keep his ripping to himself. Like I said, he has "upper" management written all over him. The machines and the jobsite would be all together better if he were to get promoted, I know I wouldn't miss him.