I woke up feeling groggy. I don't know why because I went to bed early and wasn't drinking. Went to work anyway. I went outside to bring one of our Kenworths into the shop and raised the box to drain the water. Went back into the shop to let it warm up. Went back out, jumped in and headed into the bay and heard a sickening "crunch". I had forgotten to put the box down. My mind was running through the repair I was going to do. Well I had to at least get the door working. I removed the drip edge that was screwed to the header through the steel panels and took the header out. I spent the rest of the day getting the door to open and close again. It looks like I'll get by with a new header and drip edge and five 8' panels. Should take up a Saturday. If your off your game for whatever reason, acknowledge it and be more careful than you normally are. Maybe slow down a bit.
Hate that for you, Rob. Hang tough brotha... just material and time, huh? Coulda been worse. Sounds likes you learned from your situation... appreciate the reminder. Steve
That will ruin your day.
I know how ya feel Rob, did something very similar, and thankfully, only done something like that once. Had a Bobcat in a shop bay, loader arms raised, safety prop in place, and cab raised to do some repairs in the belly of the beast. Finished the repairs, raised the 16' high roll up door, not all the way, but way more than enough for a Bobcat to fit under. Started machine, raised arms slightly, got out of the cab, and stowed safety prop. Jumped in cab, started it up, and just like you, started thinking about the next project I was going to work on. Hit the green enable button and proceeded to back out. Got just outside doorway and stopped, thought I felt something, didn't feel right. Not a hard jolt, just felt something. Still puzzled, just happened to look up. Ohhhhh noooooo. Had never even made an effort to let the loader arms down. Thankfully, being a door installer/repairman in a previous life, made quick work of getting door to where it would close. Few days later when 3' section of slats and bottom bar arrived, got it repaired in a snap. I have worked on tons of doors that have had all manner of vehicles crash through them, including rail cars...but first time I had to repair one I crashed myself. :Banghead :tong
Its really embarrassing when you're the boss. I get that "I better keep my mouth shut next time someone screws the pooch" feeling
If it makes you feel any better the guys are right, it could have been worse. A couple of years ago in a town near where I live there was a guy who was shuttleing either coal or fertilzer with twin axle dump about half mile down the road to where the stock pile was, well anyway to make a long story short he forgot to drop the box and in the process on his return trip his box clipped the overhead conveyor I believe that was owned by the local grain elevator..... something like 1.2 million in damages and a total revamp of the conveyor system was in order. I'm not sure if the driver was drinking or not but to add insult to injury it was all over the front page news, they had to shut down the terminals (coal, grain, fertilizer) and traffic was cut off for several days while they repaired the situation. Truck was totaled and he lost his job.........not a good day for him I think.
In California, they have had enough problems with dump truck drivers forgetting to put down the bed that it is a requirement to have a red light on the dash or audible warning in the cab when the bed is up. Despite this requirement, there are still guys running into overhead obstructions with the bed up. If your mind wanders from the job at hand, it is easy to screw up. When I am loading my equipment onto the trailer at the end of a job, I ask people not to help me or distract me until I finish. I have a routine I go through which makes it pretty hard to screw up. Once, though, I got interrupted just before finishing the loading and tiedown. It was near dark and when I got back to finish, it was totally dark. Somehow I forgot to fold up the ramps onto the dovetail. I drove off like that and didn't notice until I looked in the rearview mirror and saw sparks - felt pretty stupid.
Oh man...you had to bring that up Bob. Being the mechanic at our place, probably the biggest challenge I have is being deeply involved in repairing something and somebody distracts me by asking me to look at something, check this out, check that out. Upon returning to the task, I have to really focus on where I left off. Took an injection pump of a Deutz F4L912 to have it rebuilt. Very simple task, easy to remove and re-install without affecting timing. It connects to the drive gear with a keyed tapered shaft, can't screw up timing or get if out of whack. Well, typically can't. Installed pump, put lock ring on shaft threads, fitted the nut. Had long handle ratchet in hand to tighten nut when I was called to equipment yard, gone for about an hour. When I returned, looked over what I was doing, and buttoned everything up. Cranked engine, it fired right off, but only ran for a few moments. That's when it hit me, I had failed to tighten shaft nut. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Didn't do any damage to components, but, it was now completely out of timing. Problem is, Deutz didn't put timing marks on crank harmonic balancer, and couldn't view marks on flywheel within this housing. Had to get with my local injection shop to spot the pump shaft and work out the position of the engine for correct timing. Distractions will bite you in the arse! :yup
I had a customer who once had a bad start to the day - He used to transport his hoe on the back of a table top truck, had a set of ramps that would slide in under the machine. Come this day he arrived at a job location, unchained his hoe, climbed up into the seat & just drove it off the back of the truck - no ramps! :beatsme Needless to say there was some damage to steps of the hoe - not much else from memory, I think he got off pretty lightly really - apart from being a little red faced about it all....... Guess when you do the same thing over & over, it's easy to let the mind wander ointhead
Great stories, thanks for the reminder to pay attention
LoL. MB, that reminds me of something Will Rogers once said, "some learn by experience...some learn by watching others pee on the electric fence."
Reminds me of one time i drove into my shop(10' ceiling) with the loader arms up.Took out the door header and 4 rafters before i realized it.It was 30 below that day! What was i thinking!! Many years ago we had just moved in a brandnew shop,i had finnished repairs on a gravel truck.The driver fired it up and drove out with the box up, gaining speed as he went. He took out the concrete header,the overhead door and the dislodged the entire front wall.Wrecking the truck in the process.OMG!! The driver stepped out,looked back,turned white and went straight to his car and left.We never seen him back.
Im sure glad I've never made any mistakes like that.......bah ha hha ha!!!!
Coal mine had a lowboy for moving their big equip.All the operators were instructed on how to load and position booms etc.Well a Euclid haul truck running about 35mph with a 1800 Hitachi track hoe can do a lot of damage to a State bridge.Mining company bought a new bridge.Yea no body was fired just put in a different job position.
Well, we figured that much gramps. After all...you're a fisherman. :tong
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8484542.stm?ls Lets see if this works........................
Yeah know the feeling, drove a truck in to the shed thinking it would fit, no go and the roller door ended up pretty bad
Wasn't me but I watched . I had a second floor office with a big picture window that overlooked one of the doors to the shop. I knew one of the drivers pretty good, a older retired guy that worked for us for something to do. It was a nice day and the shop guy had opened the overhead door (but not all the way) while he washed the floor. It was a bad habit he had gotten into when no one was coming or going out of the shop, You know what is coming. Bill came rolling in, saw me by the window and started waving to me. I could see he wasn't going to clear the door with the truck so I started waving frantically giving him a wash out signal. The more I waved, the more Bill gave me a big grin and waved back. Bang, he caves in the door pretty good and I can see he's hung up in the door. Then he panics and puts it in reverse and proceeded to tear the door right off the tracks. He finally stops and the entire door is laying on the ground in front of the truck. New memo from the boss: all doors will be be fully raised when they are opened, they are either all the way open or all the way closed, no more partial openings allowed
I took the evestrough off the porch at the house with the bed on my one-ton dump... I didn't forget it up, I thought it would be further down!!! Its the slowest dump box ever, especially going down. It is a former Niagara Regional (public works) truck, and whoever spec'd it out to the upfitters with an electric powerpack and post hoist on a light-weight aluminum box needs a good swift kick in the balls. It literally can be several minutes to get it all the way down in cold weather. If there's a little material left in the bottom, sometimes it even takes a second person to hang from it momentarily to start the descent at all... Not that the outfitters were any brighter, removing the extra-cost optional auxillery fuel tank to mount the power pack on the frame rail instead.... on a brand new custom ordered crewcab truck.... But all that aside, rubbing the vinyl evestrough off the building was my own blunder. Cost was under $20 to replace it. I think my pride was hurt a lot more than my wallet!