I live near a tidal river. When the tide comes in, it comes in fast enough to create a wave. When the coefficient is high enough, it can be surfed. The river is constantly eating away at the river banks which are primarily soft clay held in place by whatever vegetation is growing. One of the nearby towns hired me to patch low spots on the levee. Here are a few pictures from today. The sand is from this winter's sand bags. The disintegrated from sun exposure. I couldn't get the truck any closer. Who needs a skid steer?
This last winter, the water level nearly put the top rail under water. Surfers on the river!
Is that a hooklift truck? Lets see some pics of it
What he said. Great Pics!
Mitch: your PM box is full. Steve: Mitch needs a bigger inbox AlldayRJ and ScottAR: Here ya go: Unloading the mini at the stockpile I love the tilt bucket, but it's hard to beat the backhoe bucket for loading. I didn't want to overload it since all the deliveries involved driving across soft ground.
The thumb is getting closer to being finished. I added some LED work lights, today.
very nice job on the thumb! How did you cut the serrated edges?
Thanks! I had the pieces for the thumb laser cut.
A few pictures from a pool surround that I redid back in May Couldn't get the truck in on this job so here's the Sprinter earning its keep.
Microstation job I did back in May This job was a bit of a sad story. The homeowners put in a pool last year, but the "installer" did a horrible job. It's one of those cheap steel wall + pvc liner in ground pools. Ground water pushed the liner out of place and the only way to fix it was to put in a drain. In order to get the drain in, I had to make room to work. I took out about 100 yards from behind this house. The 1.5 ton mini proved to be useless on this job. I tried to keep the concrete wall in place to keep dirt away from the pool. I needed another 6" to get the PC50 in there. I finally got sick of bouncing off the hard clay with the volvo and took out the wall to let the komatsu in. Taking the wall down was a joke. It was built by the same pool "installer". I hooked it with the bucket and pulled on it and the whole thing slide along the footing like a sliding door on a track.
I fixed a broken water line at my friend's farm after work a couple of weeks ago. I had an audience of about 12 cows lined up in a row watching me, but I missed the shot. This was the best I could do. View attachment 126555
I finished the thumb a couple of weeks ago. There are a couple of things that I could have done better on it, but it works well and I'm pretty happy with it. I was working down by the river again last week. Here's a picture of one of the locks along the river. The river side is on the right, inland to the left. The tide is on the way out in this picture, but it hasn't gotten low enough for the lock to open up. The idea is that if there is severe flooding expected, they can open up the lock so that the flood plane takes on the water instead of having the river flood somewhere else.
nice setup
Thumb looks good! I wish I would have given mine a little curve when I built it, but it works well. Its so handy I'd hate to give it up that's for sure. Mine is pinned on. Takes about a minute to hook it up if I need it or drop it if I'm running straight trench work or doing something where I need to shave a few pounds off the end of the stick. John
Maddog & JD, thanks. Being able to take off the thumb would be a plus in some cases. The extra width of the thumb has rendered my 30cm bucket useless for trenches deeper than 2'. Overall though, I'm happy to have the thumb. Getting ready to unload some clay at an old gravel quarry. There were a few thousand yards of gravel that left the quarry that weren't part of the approved extraction area. The owners have been advised to restore the area to correspond with the official topographical map. I've gotten the truck close to being stuck a couple of timesat this site. The beauty of having a hooklift truck is that you can push yourself out of a bad situation with the box.
Looks awesome! I wouldn't want to be without mine. Why don't they use thumbs in Europe that much?
Thanks. I talked to a Bobcat dealer last year. He said most machines were sold without thumbs. However, sometimes he'd sell a machine already set up with a thumb. He told me that every repeat customer that took delivery of a machine with a thumb ordered all their subsequent machines with thumbs. Part of it just comes down to awareness. I have to explain to a lot of people what it is.....and usually I have to explain what I'm going to pick up with it. Price is also a factor. I got a quote from a dealer for a pre-made thumb from R & M Buckets in Ireland: 3,100 euros- without the hydraulic lines.....oh, and he'd let me use his shop to weld the bracket onto the dipper myself. .....it's only a mini excavator. :beatsme I would have been happy to pay a reasonable price for something ready to go, but it cost me 2,000 euros less to have everything laser cut, have custom pins made up and put it together myself. One thing that's rare over here is finding a machine with a pin-on bucket. You see that on dedicated quarry machines, but anything smaller usually has a quick hitch and a set of buckets. I have 6 buckets and a hammer for the pc50 and 3 buckets and an auger for the ec15. You can't find a mini excavator to rent over here that doesn't come with 3 buckets. I don't know if things have changed in the US, but when I was still in Connecticut, every machine I rented came with only 1 pin on bucket.
such a nice place to live... may i ask where is this located?
It's a better place if you're on vacation. This project is outside of Bordeaux, France.
This is going to be my last installment of work pictures for a while. I don't have an official answer just yet, but I've applied for enrollment in a civil engineering program. I should know by Wednesday or Thursday if I definitely got in. Here are a few pictures of the last job I did. Signs are posted up and down the road that no trucks are allowed on this stretch of road. This guy had to see for himself why not. This was a run down yard with around 10 trees on it when I started. This house is the commercial building in the pictures above. I demoed the roof, interior walls and the back wall. The owner kept 3 walls standing so that he could build on the same footprint. He wouldn't have been allowed to build with the new setback laws.
Nice work! Best of luck on the future!
Thanks and Thanks ddigger. The future's a bit up in the air at this point, but I'm optimistic.
Joispoi, I'm liking your pictures and your jobs. What do you mean by "The future's a bit up in the air at this point, but I'm optimistic"? Is everything going good?
Fastdirt, to sum things up, I'm about to be "the one man show that closed". I'm getting out while I'm ahead (not by much, but it's better than being in the hole). I'm an American living and working in France (my wife needed to be near her family). The taxes here are over the top. There's a 20% value added tax on goods and services rendered. Then there's the overhead that goes with being in business. Any profit that is made is taxed at 48%....but they don't call that a tax, they call it "social charges". After paying the "social charges", anything left over 26,000 euros gets taxed at 30%....over 72,000 euros gets taxed a 41% (hasn't been a problem for me over here ). Then there's the fact that in France, not every business gets taxed the same way. There's a way to be in business and pay only 23% taxes and not have to charge the value added tax....the drawback is that you can't take any tax deductions on anything and they limit is 33,000 euros/year. That's generally not an issue because the average declared income for those paying 23% tax is a little over 5,000 euros per year. They're all working for cash and gutting the market. There are over 1,000,000 people in France with this tax status. It's a problem for anyone in the trades. As much as I like doing this kind of work, the money left over at the end of the year isn't enough to justify the time spent away from the family and the money tied up in aging equipment. My best bet is to get into project management. I'm starting school on April 1 (no joke). It's a 2 year program where I'll get a master's degree in engineering with a concentration in construction management. When I posted that the future was up in the air, I wasn't sure that I'd gotten into school. I'm not sure where I'm going to be working once I'm out of school, but an engineering degree and 17+ years experience in construction and general contracting should help me to provide for my family better than I have been. I'm 99% sure I'm going to have to move to get a decent job. So, geographically speaking, that part of the future is up in the air. Ideally, I'd like to get back to the northeast to be near my family. I've got 7 brothers and sisters and right now, there's the width of the Atlantic Ocean between me and all of them. Fastdirt, I've been enjoying your posts and pictures as well. It's good to see pictures of jobs that are done right and it's uplifting to read about a man succeeding in life. I've been living vicariously through your posts and pictures. The pool pictures look like they came out of the pool builder's text book and the Pete is coming together better than I could have planned.
Hey there Joispoi, Best of luck in your future endeavours. I had heard that the tax system was a bit confusing in the european countries. But what you describes sounds completely nuts.
Unbelievable story and life you have lived and are living. You have all of my respect. I've lived in the same county my whole life and know nothing about what you are doing and experiencing. I'm watching a Netflix movie about the Alps as we speak. It's a beautiful place so I googled it. $1400 a flight and 11 hours in the air so yes the Atlantic is quite a journey and an expense to just make a family visit. Still hard to believe all those tax obstacles over there for the industry. You've gone through so much I'm sure just to be at your level in that environment. I really hope the best for you and you sound like a real go getter. At least you have the masters to go to and a great family in your corner. I'd have to go back to a grading or pipe crew and fight my way up again. Man best of luck to you and I'll try to keep my head above the tax man here. Luckily the Pete is a deduction and the "aging" equipment is still going. I also don't have kids to support and that changes everything I can only imagine. Several things could level me at any point. Wish you could catch a break but you can't change Gov't really.
Guys, thanks for the kind words. 712alberta, nuts is about the best way to describe it without going off on a rant that would border on political discussion. I will say that France has one of the higher suicide rates in Europe, and within France the suicide rate is disproportionately high for the self-employed. Here are some farmers that aren't too happy about the rules of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYlSwNtMGdE Fastdirt, I can't say that any of this was planned out. Living in one place your whole life can be a great thing. Most places are more fun to visit as a tourist than to live in and try to make a living. Visit the Alps when you get a 3 week period that you can take off. It's worth the plane fare. As for being a go getter, I think that term is reserved for people who actually manage to "get". I used to be one, but I've been coming up short the last couple of years. I think I've been demoted to "just plain stubborn". When I first moved here in 2009, I spoke very little French. I took a job as a carpenter and learned French from guys that thought it was funny that I made mistakes when I talked. It was miserable, but when you have kids, you'd be surprised what you'll go through in order to be sure that they're well cared for. I did that for a year and a half and then went out on my own doing small jobs, driveways etc. The masters degree isn't a done deal. It's going to be a lot of work to get through it(I should be reviewing math instead of writing this right now). I do have a great family. My wife is behind me 100% on this decision. The kids think it's funny that I'm going to go to school just like them. They asked all the important questions: Do you know who your teacher is going to be? How long do you have for recess? I don't think it's so much about catching a break as making a break for it. You seem to already know that, though. I'll keep following your threads. It will be interesting to see where you are in a year from now. I know all about write-offs. Here's my old work truck. I was in my 20's and it seemed necessary at the time. :beatsme
This isn't work related, but I took this picture when sitting in traffic the other day. I thought the train fans and the 'mog fans might enjoy this one. It's a bad picture, but they're using the unimog to pull the hopper cars.