I've been around the dirt scene since I was about 14, I've worked around some amazing ACE operators and I've worked around some HORRIBLE hands. I have always been passionate and proud of my trade, from the way I present myself to customers to my finished products. I had the luxury of one of the greatest operators I ever knew breaking me in and I am forever in his debt for passing on his knowledge and the lessons he taught me. One of his most important lessons he taught me was learned on the end of a shovel. We were backfilling a large hospital addition and he was running the hoe, I was laboring, running the jumping jack and shoveling. It was hot for these parts and I was hungover and he knew it, he also knew how much I loved to learn. So at coffee break he says I got a great lesson in store for you, I sarcastically said, oh great as I choked down some swill and we went back to work. Ol Joe started throwing buckets of gravel in the hole, set his bucket on the ground and kicked up his feet. I looked up and said W.T.F.? Joe: Shovel that gravel around and hit it with the tamp, we ain't got all day!! Me: Eff you, that things got a bucket!!! Joe: Eff you, you got a shovel, I'm the boss, and I don't feel like grading it off for your lazy butt. So I proceed to work like this the rest of the day, shovel and tamp while Joe sat in the hoe and watched, he would blatantly put it in big piles dropped from way up high so it packed it in as it landed and made shoveling harder. He would holler at me the whole time, telling me to hurry up and so on, all the while pissing me off to no end. We finished the day, I went home with my tale dragging wondering the whole time what this great lesson could be. I knew better than to come in hungover and he pretty much whipped me of that bad habit if it only happened once in a blue moon he didn't mind too much, I was a young, ambitious eager to learn kid, there wasn't too many floating around so I could kinda get away with little stuff like that. The next day rolls around, get my stuff around and head to the hole expecting to have to work my butt off again. First couple buckets come down nice and smooth, he reaches in, grades 'em off, wipes it smooth with heal leaving nothing but tamp work. Next lift, 'ol "Gomer Piles" is back, shovel shovel shovel!, next lift, Cool hand Luke, wipes her nice and smooth, back and forth all day, Gomer, Luke, Gomer, Luke. Finally I had enough, I snapped, threw my shovel and said What the Eff are you trying to teach me now? He says who would you rather labor under an operator that helps you, or an operator that hurts you? It clicked right then and there, some day when I had a full time seat I knew that I would do everything in my power to make sure my laborers don't have to shovel. So after that long story, now you know my biggest pet PEAVE, USE THE MACHINERY TO ITS FULLEST POTENTIAL!!! DON'T MAKE A LABORER DO IT, WHEN IT IS SAFER, EASIER AND FASTER WITH MACHINERY, THAT'S WHAT IT IS FOR!!! I despise no talent, ignorant, lazy operators who would rather see a laborer shovel than to try and help them out. It's a lot easier to move a few little levers than it is to shovel. I have laborers that bring me all kinds of yummy treats nowadays because they appreciate my talents and efforts. I go out of my way to make sure my bucket is doing all the work, not their shovel. Not only is it easier for them, but at the end of the day, it's usually more productive too. Whenever an intricate, labor intensive project was to be done my superintendent sent me in, knowing the laborers wouldn't be abused and it would get done in a timely manner. They would thank me and I would just tell them to "thank Joe".
Great post, bigshow... loved it...:thumbsup OCR
Yair . . . Nice story bigshow . I guess most of us have someone who made an impression one way or another. Not to hi-jack your thread but I think I told the story on here somewhere about a young bloke apprenticed to an engineering/welding shop in a little country town. The one proviso stipulated and agreed to was that he had to cut his hair which hung down to his shoulders. Didn't happen, didn't happen and he thought the boss must have forgotten . . . until the morning he got scruffed and had his hair cut off with a four pound hammer on the anvil. It sure made an impression on him and he loves to tell the tale and reckons he owes a lot to his boss. Cheers.
I started in the ditch with a shovel, and I always vowed to be the best operator i could be. Its a lot easier to pull those levers than kick a shovel in the ground. I try my damnest to make that happen, no matter how much the laborer pisses me off. But Dont tell me to dump that half bucket of gravel for pipe grade, then MFer me for dumping a bucket too much you have to shovel out. I hate that, I only do what y6u tell me. The only time I try to screw my laborers is when I am sitting there with a bucket of stone to bed the pipe and they are sending a text or nowhere to be found. They can shovel then, I have been then, your job is not that hard when you are there to direct me, but disappear and that shovel is your new best friend.
fill the back of the shovel lad; the front will fill itself
I have many but I will start with, 1.dozer operators NOT using the decel pedal 2.Mediocre hoe hands running a machine at WOT for light simple work or not smashing the return to idle button when setting Pj
Yair . . . Good one D6 Merv I like that. (he grins)
Great story Bigshow. 390eric, I have the same situation here. On our crew the guy with the shovel is supposed to direct the hoe operator. Do a good job of directing and your job is easy. Do a poor job and you get to kill yourself. It works fairly well as the man on the shovel is well motivated to pay attention, and not screw up. Pet Peaves? Operators who fail to check fluids, warm up and cool down machines. Drives me nuts!!!
PJ, I don't think you'd like me then, I'm not a big decel fan, I will in situations when it ups production, in certain situations more traction is obtained through a lighter foot.. I don't run a hoe at anything but W.O.T., I feel they have a better response when multifunctioning, that's just my opinion though. I feel more comfortable that way, whether it's swinging barrier or digging around one of those "Hit it and it's a $125,000 an hour penalty" fiber optic lines with 20 white hats all watching intently. Again, that's just me and how I want to do it, but then again, those white hats always shake my hand and want to buy me coffee or beer when it's all said and done. I got over how other operators maintain their piece of iron a long time ago, I'm super meticulous about my maintenance and used to flip out about it. Now I don't waste my time, energy or breathe. Management sees something in that particular person and they are still around, so I pay no attention to them and worry about my particular task. Ol' Joe used to tell me "Don't clutter your mind with inconsequential information", basically what he was telling me was to mind my own Effing business and do what I needed to do, so long as it wasn't an unsafe act, let idiots be idiots. I hear guys all the time "what's so and so doing it that way for, I would do it this way or that way, and blah blah blah" Well maybe you are doing it wrong and that's why they are doing it and not you.
Mine is people who leave cab doors open. Sooner or later either the wind or something else is gonna rip one off.
Bigshow your teacher must have gone to the same school as my dad. I could sit here and probably remember a dozen stories that went just like the one you told. That's why I'm a firm believer in teaching from the bottom up.
Overloading loader and getting rear wheels in the air, spinning tires (especially with chains), not warming up with equipment. I agree with bigshow on wot,from graders ,hoes, to cranes they react better and are more predictable!
Warming up the equipment- I "stretch" my equipment while the motor is warming it up. Cycle all the functions slowly at half throttle, pick up track and cycle the track, pick up tandems on grader with rear ripper and blade to warm up drivetrain, I pick up the tires on M318's and cycle the drivetrain on them also. Take care of the iron and it takes care of you. Buckfever- My dad always said if you start at the top, there is only one way to go, if you start at the bottom, there is only one way to go. I'm totally with you on starting at the bottom.
Great thread Bigshow, and a good story to start.
Grease or mud on the controls. How hard is it to was your hands off in a puddle or take five minuets with a rag to get the grease off your hands.
That makes at least three of us now, they do have a better, and "finer" response... OCR
Starting at the bottom with a shovel or a rake will teach you how to grade, that's the way I was taught and learned how to "see" grade. One of my favorite saying is - " Laziness makes a great operator" - if they have been on the end of a shovel. A good operator will figure out how to do a task with a machine instead of manual labor because he has been on the manual labor end. I think it is imperative that all operators should start at the bottom and work their way up. It drives me crazy watching those "home improvement" shows where they are taking a concrete patio or drive out and have a skid steer there lifting the piece of concrete up and two people pounding away with sledgehammers to break it up. ointhead If the operator in the skid had any knowledge what so ever, he would know how to take that concrete out with the machine in manageable pieces but then again maybe it's just ******** TV.
Cigarette butts and half empty cans of soda pop in the equipment or the cup holder in the truck....they always leave a stinky and sticky mess.
Yes sir, bigshow I completely agree with you. My first boss was the same as far as me owing everything to him. Just think if some hack broke you into dirt. I worked with his nephews for years. At 19 running a chainsaw behind mad loaders doing several lots a day. It took all I had not to quit, but soon I was knocking the trees over too. Gotta sweat everything you have if you want to go all the way. As far as the machine doing it all, that's the only way it should be. Good ground guys are great and the good ones never look up at you, they just attack it. That's when I have to pop the bucket, or beep and I want to do everything in my power to make their job as easy as me/machine possibly can. Like you said it makes everything better all around to do all you can. I think being an operator is one of the satisfying jobs in the world. Sure guys get hungover. It's understandable. I'm not to judge. You know when it's a problem.
I agree, thats true.
Two BIG pet peeves here...... 1) Lack of tools and or the basics!!! These guys all march around like they are the second coming thinking they deserve the big money on these jobs and priority to the overtime etc. Thing is you look in their tool bucket and they got a pair of rusty vise crips and a broken chalk line and they are constantly borrowing tools from the younger guys who invest there cash in the things they need because they are trying to make a "career" out of this trade. This one guy in particular is strutting around all the time telling these guys hes a 25 year man with all this and that but he cant even invest in a pair of work boots that cost more than $25! YOU ARE NOT A PROFESSIONAL IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE THINGS IT TAKES TO DO YOUR JOB! It definitely shows where a persons priorities are in life! 2) Jobsite cleanliness!!! Your company and your crew look like a bunch of amateurs if the jobsite is not tidy and organized. Once again, it usually goes back to the whole pre-Madonna thing with these guys being "above" cleaning up at the end of the day. They think the younger guys can do it, but they dont realize these guys are so busy taking care of other things that they dont have the time most days. Its also shows a total lack of respect for these guys and teaches them bad habits.
Pre-Madonna? I think you mean prima donna.
Lets not be a "prima donna" here............
Trying to break one of my hands of this now. I show up on site to assist and it is a complete disaster. Rags all over, hoses open and leaking oil, and parts just thrown on the ground. I try to explain that customers see this as well. I am not a neat freek by far butt, as a rep for my company you do things a certain way to make the customer have faith in you.
This reminded me of something from a two years back. I was at a sister plant location and they had a outside contractor mechanic there to assist our mechanic at this location. The outside contractor was done doing his job and spent at least an hour cleaning up the shop, most of the mess he was cleaning up was the mess our mechanic had caused. He said he was tired of working in the mess! I'm not sure of what our company was paying this guy but sure it was well over double the rate our mechanic was being paid. Too many management people in our company don't see the problems with messy workers. PS I'm not putting the outside guy down he's a great guy who I have worked with in the past and if he is going to be working at my location I will do my best to make things clean for him to work like I do for any one.
Grease or mud on the controls kills me, as does open cab doors. I also have a real problem with people not returning ground engaging tools to the ground before they stop, and turning really hard on anything rubber tired backing out of a pile with a full bucket. Great thread!
Wear your gloves outside the cab, take them off when you get inside the cab. Dirty cab floors, takes LITERALLY seconds to sweep the floor. Using paper towels to clean windows, buy a scrubber/squeegee at home depot, work better and faster with no wasted paper towels. Dirty grease guns, use that paper towel to wipe it off once in a while. Scratched up counterweights drive me nutts. Excavators without rear view mirrors, helps keep c/w from getting scratched up. Folks that don't utilize an angle blade on a dozer. Folks that runs grader with the blade rolled ALL the way forward ALL the time and straight and then whine cuz it "Won't roll no dirt" Folks that won't hit the "travel alarm cancel" button when traveling forward for long distances. Folks leaving their wipers/lights/turn signals/rotating beacons on when not needed. Doors/windows left open. Uncleaned tracks. Using wrenches and pliers backwards. Hand signals when I can OBVIOUSLY see, and they are the wrong signals anyways. G.E.T. randomly left in the air, except rippers, someone always drives away with them down. Folks that aren't aware of their surroundings, look up, down, left, right, forwards and backwards. Excavators that DON'T have an opening roof hatch, I like to look UP. Folks that don't know how to utilitize the proper rigging, I.e. nylons, wire chokers, and chains. Noisy operators, the kind that are always banging and clanging. Operators that CONSTANTLY cycle excavator buckets to full dump EVERTYIME!!! Digging over final drives. Traveling over the finals. Improper set-up when loading trucks in an M.E. situation. Anyone that drives on my fine grade. Tire marks when rolling, roll your way out. Windrows of any kind. If I tracked a slope up and down, don't you DARE travel a dozer across it after I'm done. I'm sure I forgot a few things......
I think we'd get along pretty well bigshow. I wrap up my grease gun to keep any grease from getting on the place it's sitting (Cause no matter how often I wipe it off I always seem to miss a spot) and keep the gun from getting dirty if I get on a machine where it has to sit in a dirty spot. Always try to have the broom handy for the floor too, and there's a reason they give us track shovels on the first day at work, so my tracks are clean at the end of the day.
Mine right now is chasing after customers who don't pay, especially when you jump through hoops just to give them a hand
How exactly does one use a wrench or pliers backward?
Yair . . . (he grins). I wondered about that too. Nearest I can figure is bigshow is referring to folks who pull a wrench, particularly an adjustable wrench against the off-set, this is seen as putting the weight and forces against the adjustable and weaker jaw. This maybe so but sometimes its convenient to do so and I can't see it makes no neverminds with a conventional open ended wrench or spanner. Also, as far as I can see there is no backwards or forwards with ordinary pliers but the ones with toothed or slotted adjustments which we call "multigrips" work best when operated in the correct orientation, much in the manner of a pipe-wrench. Is that your meaning bigshow ?
You are right Scrub Puller. Open ended wrenches or in Oz "spanners" are designed to be pulled in a certain direction, crescent wrenches, slip joint pliers, vise grips and pipe wrenches are all directional tools as well. Google it or YouTube it, I can't post links. Will an open end wrench work backwards? Absolutely, a bulldozer can pull as much dirt backwards as it can push forward too, might take a bit longer and be a bunch more work, but it'll do it. Will a pipe wrench work backwards? not usually, but I never tried once I knew right from wrong. My dad, uncle and granddad were all professional plumbers so I was about 8 when I learned that tid-bit, And they were all douche bags to work for. Grandpa always said "A fool always blames the tool".
Slobs with grease guns would have to be one of my biggest. The swear words seem to just start flowing on their own when I get grease on myself from something that shouldn't ever have grease on it: steering wheel, door frame, trailer hitch ball....the list goes on and on. Normally I don't swear and I'm not impressed when I hear it from others, but grease will bring out the compound swears.
I never hire a man with the seat of his pants patched up or with holes in them because the only way you get holes like that is from sitting on your but and not working
I'll add to the grease part. Why will someone using a powered grease gun keep pumping grease when it is leaking all around the coupler? If the coupler is bad replace it, have several spares that everyone has been told about. If the fitting is damaged o\same thing there are new ones in the drawer in the parts room. And when installing grease fittings don't tighten them so much, a little over finger tight is fine. Makes it easier to remove next time! One more b1tch about greasing. Stop pumping when you see clean grease. Once it come out of the joint it is only causing a mess and a p1$$ed off mechanic next time I have to work in that area. Okay just one more, bosses who think things don't need to be greased till they start squeaking!
How else are you supposed to know when it needs grease???
This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I have an air greaser mounted on a skid that we throw into a pickup and take to the job. I have had employees just keep pulling the trigger while watching the handful of grease spill out around the fitting. It's not hard to replace a fitting and there are boxes of fittings in both trucks, it just takes a second to see if the fitting is bad but those extra seconds of squeezing the trigger wastes a lot of grease and makes a helluva mess.
To put it bluntly, those are the types that are idiots and have no place in the HE world - managers and operators alike.:cool2
I am with you on that one. It's amazing how some folks can get grease all down the grease gun body. I like that last sentence too, kind of loose respect for a man when he is a foul mouth, but I'm guilty of swearing when it comes to grease everywhere.
I was actually guilty of that one a couple times over the summer. Job we were on had a lot of equipment so they brought up the lube trailer, which has an air compressor grease gun. Most of the time I'd grease at the end of shift with little trouble, it was when I tried to grease at 4:45am that I got messy. A couple times, I left little blobs, tried to make sure I cleaned them up, but when it's still dark out it's not always easy to spot. Best bet was just to drag the bowls on my way out and catch anything I dropped. I do not like wearing grease that I either lean into or brush against either.
As long as you keep it under your breath, nobody can judge you for it. Since we're talking about it, swearing is actually a peeve of mine. I get it when somebody smashes their hand with a mallet and they let loose with the four letter words. In a case like that, get it out....you've earned it. But what bugs me is when people swear out of context. They just drop a filthy word in the middle of a sentence with no apparent reason why. It just gets weird. I was on a job last spring where I was digging trenches and the electrician and the plumber where laying their pipes and conduits. The electrician had a Romanian laborer there to help sand the trench. This guy had 2 left hands and was dumb as a box of rocks but still new enough to be able to tell everyone how to do their jobs. I was moving faster with the excavating than the plumber could lay his pipe, so I would jump of the machine and get in the trench and help him. The soil on this job was a nightmare. It was clay the consistency of frozen peanut butter. So when it came time to hand dig around the old connections, it proved challenging at times. I lost count of how many times I was working in the trench and the laborer would come over, lean on his rake or shovel and swear about what miserable work I had to do. I wasn't complaining, but I had this idiot swearing in the most vulgar way and complaining for me.
Well for one thing there is that book that came with the machine that tells the proper interval for greasing! :avid But then I know you were pulling my leg on that one. Even that does not work in severe applications like our stone quarry. When they let the mechanics, me and another guy, do the greasing. We did ever thing in front of the center pins once a day and all other points once a week. Never had one come in with a squeaking pin and we knew not to over grease and make a mess. The only time we did have a dry pin was on the 980G's that have the grease hoses run under the boom at the top of the boom. Need to keep close watch on those!
Another pet peeve, people that are too good or too smart to read that book, take it home and read it. We get paid a half hour in the morning to check over the machine, grease, clean windows and what not. Me personally, I prefer to grease in the evening, but it's their call. I do take 5 and shovel out my tracks at night, it presents a better image to the passing general public to see clean tracks at night, I think so anyways. To me it just says, hey this guy cares about his job. Sometimes I'll cut my lunch a few minutes short to grease if we're really hustling dirt.
I like the idea of greasing at the end of shift. That way you flush out the dirt and water before it hardens up over night. Same for the tracks.
I agree with greasing at the end of a shift when the joints are still warm.
Since we're off topic a bit now, I generally grease at the end of shift on colder days, that way the grease might be a little warmer. In the summer, it's a coin toss if I do at the beginning or end of shift. I always shovel my tracks, no matter how dirty they are.
People that drag nylon straps, chains, or choker cables on the ground, first of all, they aren't cheap. Second of all, you're picking stuff with them, why would you want them all abraded? Thirdly, that mud puddle you just dragged them through is now hanging in the air dripping mud all over something or someone.
Bigshow, you can add the big 100' measuring tapes to that list too. Can we not drag those through the mud puddles too I ran into a guy recently that appeared to be the "grader". Not sure why he was on a rental, but I can assume his bobcat was in the shop from abuse. So he had a rental and obviously could care less. The other side looked the same. He came from another lot so I didn't see the neglect first hand. I can't imagine what he kept backing into, but the rear of this newer Takeuchi had some serious gouges in the body.
Any tape measure in my book, as far as that skid loader, I could never understand stuff like that. I would NEVER think of ramming my $50,000 pick-up or my $3,000 beater into anything, WHY would you do it with $100,000+ equipment??? I understand accidents happen, none of us are perfect, but at least strive for perfection.
We need to hire this guy that looks good compared to our company ssl's! The ones that get me are the damage to the front of the ROPS! Rear can almost be understood due to difficulty seeing out the back but the front, I mean what they hit is only a foot or two from their face:Banghead I tried offering a suggestion on how to stop those from happening but I think the safety department shot it down. I said let me remove the ROPS for a week then after a couple decapitations the other operators would get the idea.
I grew up in this stuff and remember one of my first run ins with an operator! I was a hub jumper, building a small county two lane road I would mark shoulder sub grade elevations "no laser" cut fill all that crap. the blade guy would drive by in the grader look at what I had written on the ground with the paint proceed to move blade material from high to low and inevitably cut too deep in the cuts and fill to much in the fill areas. I would go back and check and paint everything again only to have him mess it all up again! after spending days in the same 2000 foot section the job super asked what in the heck was happening? I had no idea! Come to find out this guy was just watching me bust my ars for the fun of it! sick effer he stayed around for years never became a better person. I was on a job as a mechanic later, a big pond with a flat bottom I welded one of those laser recievers on the back of the blade of a d-8 that you watch the arrows from the cab, within an hour of the grade check guy being gone after getting a nice starting spot dialed in for this guy, the receiver had somehow fell off the back of the blade without him knowing it and it had gotten run over by the cat? he was and is a cull in my book...TIO
People that post on here with horrible spelling/grammar. No it doesn't need to be perfect but at least a 3rd grade level would be nice! People that post on here with almost no info expecting to get help. "My truck won't start, what is wrong with it?" Hmm... What truck? Engine?, etc, etc.
When a job has been sitting in the yard for a week..[4 days to long]... and your told to get on it.. then 5 other mechanics stand around and watch you fix it..
I'll take this one step farther... People using just the letter U instead of writing "you", or R instead of "are"... That just portrays laziness in my oppinion........