This one's mainly to vent.... Today I was doing some rather delicate work. The undeground electrical service has already been installed at the site, but the buildings were not constructed as originally designed. Thus, some of the electric company's boxes have ended up right in the middle of driveways and consequently, I have to uncover about 150' of wire so that the boxes can be relocated. There's only about 6' between the garage doors and the edge of the pavement, and the trench is located right at the edge of the pavement. This afternoon, I'm digging and getting pretty close to one of the existing boxes, so I'm pretty focused on that. The backhoe is sitting at a little bit of an angle to the work, so I'm looking mainly at one side of the hoe. The boom is about 5' above the ground. A carpenter walks out of the garage and ducks *right* under the boom, between the tractor and the dipper. I never saw him until he was there under the boom. Fortunately, the bucket was all the way at the bottom of the hole, so I couldn't really have lowered the boom very far anyway, but there's no way *he* could have known that. Had I been 6 inches higher with the boom, and put it down quickly at just the wrong time, I could have broken his neck. HOW THE HECK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH BEHAVIOR LIKE THAT?? :beatsme
That's a good question. Just the other day I was spreading a load of stone in a small driveway and some kid just pulls up in front of me and hopes off his bike and laid it down right at the end of the drive. I had too stop spreading,let the bed down and get out to make him move it. I yelled at him when he first did it but he just ignored me till I got out. I wanted to drive over that bike real bad but .......you know.
dig the hole a lil deeper break his neck bury him in the hole.. make an example out of it.. not alot you acn do. try taping the area off next time. it may help ya out. i hate idiots.. maybe thats why theres only a few people i can work with .. and if you didnt know us you would think we hate each other. he screams at me cuss's me.. and i do the same to him.. from time to time we eve n throw **** at each other. but when the works done. we go grab a beer together and smile cause were really good buddies out side of work.. payton
Not really an idiot story but it easily could have been. Early last fall I was contracted by one of the forest service districts around here to remove 3 CMP's and replace with 3 larger CMP's in anticipation of some major runoff from an area that was burned in a wildfire last summer. All work was paid for by the hour and to save money the F.S. provided there own dumptrucks and some guys from there firecrew for labor so what should have taken 3 days at the most wound up taking seven. Anyway, the big deadline was to have the road open by opening day of Elk season. The last culvert was a 24" which was replaced by a 60" half round with an inlet of 4' deep from centerline, outlet 16' deep from centerline. As you can imagine this required a huge hole which also had to be wide enough to get my excavator into so I could build a bench and place rip rap for a splash apron. On the morning before opening day I arived at about 6:00 AM to find a couple sitting in lawn chairs on the edge of the trench, drinking their morning coffee, behind them was a brand new Dodge pickup pulling a brand new 32' fifth wheel. They seemed relieved to see me and had a sense of humor about the fact that they had almost driven there brand new rig into a 16' deep hole, paper plates and all. They had arrived around midnight, ignored the road closed barricade 3 mi back at the last intersection and continued on there merry way. At 12:10 AM the next morning, opening day, I had managed to get one section of pipe in and backfilled which gave them a 10' wide path around a corner, barely enough for them to tip toe through and get on there way. It took 3 more days to complete the project because every time I turned around there would be cars and pickups lined up in both directions full of hunters with a serious case of Elk Fever all of which completely ignored the road closed signs and most of which were not too happy when they got to me. A Chapman
see thats where i would have been an *******.. road closed means road closed.. back that bitch up.. sorry bout your luck! yeah im a **** but thats me..
Forest Service around here has a policy which requires them and anyone employed by them to BE POLITE AND SHOW RESPECT TO THE PUBLIC because it's public land. As far as the public was concerned I was POLITE AND RESPECTFUL since it was 28 deg outside and snowing lightly I kept all my comments nice and warm inside my cab. Trust me there were many times I just stayed right in the middle of the road and kept right on working until one of the drivers or fire crew had heard enough and came over to ask me to please let the traffic go by. When it's just me and my own crew we are usually not as inclined to be POLITE AND SHOW RESPECT TO THE PUBLIC. Road closed means road closed, in some cases we are required to allow traffic to pass for 15 minutes of every hour and have a pilot car, trouble is there is usually so little traffic that only we know when that 15 minutes begins which is almost always an hour after you get there. HA! A Chapman
I was swinging sand into a garage while i was waiting for my perimeter drain inspection. Inspecter starts walking towards the garage as im swinging back for another load of sand. nearly sent him sailing towards the street. I never seen a guy run so fast. He was a little shook up and he didnt even really check my drains just said it looked good and signed the card
There are some wonderful people in this world... We had to do a job some time back in front of a cafe opposite a hospital. With the cities approval we cordoned off a parking bay in which we could load out the truck. There was absolutley no other place to park that wouldn't block a priority road and also prevent ambulances from getting to/from the hospital. Anyway, the truck heads off to the dump and I'd dooking around the backyard in the skid. I go out the front to clean the footpath and wait for the truck. A big mercedes comes up the road, runs over three of our witches hats and parks in our loading bay. I'm standing there in amazement while the guy jumps out and goes into a house a few doors up. Next our truck comes back and blocks the street. I tell my guy to park Hard over against the Merc. The guy comes out and starts screaming about how can we do that and do we have no respect etc etc... So I go slower for awhile... then..because the guy is hurling abuse at everybody I tell my guy to back up a little and let the guy out. Mr Merc drivers gets in and floors it, without looking, straight out and hits a hospital delivery truck. At least he didn't have far to go to hospital...and I gave his license plate and a statement to the police...turns out the guy is a Doctor, not from the hospital but some specialist, suit wearing, Merc driving, overpaid, golf playing, world revolves around me jerkoff.
I'll bet you shed a tear over that one, eh Sqizzy?:wink
I lay awake at night worrying about him :angel
I have two stories for everyone. 1. We were working in a "i am better than you" neighborhood when a guy pulled up to one of our operators & motioned for him to kill the engine, which he did. The suit then told him that if he did not stop getting dirt on the road & making his car muddy, he was going to send us the car wash bills. Our operator told him that if he did not quit interupting his work day, he would clean the street with his a**. The guy never said another word. 2. I was grading a two lane road to a driving range. We would bring one side up, compact it, then bring the other lane up. I had done this all day with everyone driving by being very understanding & polite. Near the end of the day, a car load of young punks drove by me doing at least 30 m.p.h. They were screaming & throwing trash out of their windows. Guess they forgot there was only one way in & one way out. OOPS. Since the low rider Cavalier they were in barely cleared the ground anyway, I figured a few bumps would give them a ride to remember. I graded the stone with about a 6 inch drop, then about a 6 inch rise 20 - 30 feet away from the drop. When they came flying back through, I just sat back, watched & laughed my head off as they hit those bumps & the sparks & stone flew!!!!!!
I was recently working in one of those "I'm better than you neighborhoods" and had to back my truck and trailer off a main road into a little side road. To do this I ended up blocking traffic for a very short time period. I back my rig almost every day and can back into almost any situation without making any adjustments, so the delay for others was less than a minute. As I stopped to start my backing, the traffic opposing me stopped and waited. Just as I started backing, a suit in a Mercedes comes up behind me and just lays on his horn. Not intermittent honking, but a steady blast. As I was almost finished with my move, I got out and went up to the guy and told him I would stay there until he stopped honking his horn. How long he waited was up to him. He quit honking as he was giving me a dirty look and I got in and finished backing. As soon as there was enough room for him to get by, he floored it honking his horn and giving me the finger. I figure the guy must have a miserable life to be such a jerk over such a small thing.
Good move on your part, Bob! :drinkup Not construction related, but a good story nevertheless--Waay back when, my Grandfather had an old Model T (or something similar), that you had to hand crank to start. One day, at an intersection, he stalled. In those days, streetcars were a pretty common site around town, and the tracks were literally embedded in the street. As it happened, where he stalled was on the cars tracks, and soon enough, a streetcar came along. Grandpa was cranking and cranking, and couldn't get the thing to start. The streetcar conductor started ringing the bell, and wouldn't stop. It didn't take Grandpa too long to stop cranking, and walk back to the streetcar and say, "How about you go on up there and crank for a while, and I'll sit here and ring the #@@$#^*% bell...."
Also not construction related, but an old story my Grandfather always told us: Many years ago, my Grandfather farmed several hundred acres, near Bath, South Dakota. This was back when there wasn't anything between Bath and Aberdeen, (which now has as much urban sprawl as any other little town in the midwest). A couple, driving some 60's vintage land barge came flying down the snowy road, and put it into the ditch. Grandpa, drove past and stopped to help, on his way back home. (this was back when neighbors helped neighbors.) Grandpa knew his pickup didn't have the grunt to pull out that big car, especially with all the snow around, so he offered to go home, get something more suitable, and pull the couple out. He was back 20 minutes later with his eight tired tractor. As he got out to discuss things, the wife said "you're not going to pull this brand new X thousand dollar Caddy out with that old tractor, are you? Grandpa simply said "I won't pull your X thousand dollar Caddie out with my 3X thousand dollar tractor if you don't want me to." The husband quickly assessed the situation, hushed his wife, and proceeded to help hitch up the chains. Grandpa always snickered about this one.
We were doing the site grading on one of those golf course neighborhoods a few years ago, and had 6 or 7 627's on a 1/4 mile haul. Going full tilt as usual. Some engineer is driving around the site with a woman in a black Suburban, windows up, A/C on, and pulls out onto the haul road right when I shift up into 6th gear, about 100 feet or so in front of me. Even if that scraper had brakes, which it didn't, it's not gonna stop on a dime, so I had to swerve waaay over to the side of the haul road to avoid creaming him. Which had a 6 foot drop off at the edge at that part... It was lunch time anyway, so when I got to camp, I told the boss what happened, and said something like "Somebody ought to tell that engineer to watch out when he's on the job" although probably not worded that politely! He told me to go for it... I get up to where this engineer is now standing around, and not losing my cool, asked him if he was an engineer. He says yes, so I presented him with an engineering question. "What do you suppose would happen if a 7000 pound Chevy suburban gets run over by 100,000 pounds of Caterpillar scraper"? He then got a lecture about it's braking abilities, right of way on haul roads and the good idea of leaving a window down when driving on the job, so you could hear what you didn't see...and how much it would suck to be responsible for killing someone, even if it isn't your fault... And it worked too, he always was very careful onsite after that. I'm just glad that on most dirt jobs, we're the only idiots onsite til the work is over! Let's be careful out there! alan627b
my daddy told me a long time ago IT IS HARD TO SOAR LIKE AN EAGLE WHEN YOU WORK WITH TURKEYS thansk
Alan you should have gotten a little closer to that jerk before you swerved off to the side. Maybe if he needs to change his shorts once or twice he will start looking where he is going.
Oddly enough, the one foreman I worked with this summer would do the same thing in front of our A30's... course we have brakes
Well..???.. did you use them?
We had some 657s running on a job out here with a long haul. And they where cheaping out and didn't want to pay the water truck driver to start early for dust control. Some dumb surveyor decided to drive this truck down the haul road with the dust they never saw the truck 3 of the scrapers ran it over before anyone got stopped. You can guess the out come.
Foremen, surveyors, dirt testers and state highway inspectors....are not suitable fill material. I'm glad I haven't seen anything that gory yet. I saw first hand the reason not to use chains to tow heavy equipment. My boss is lucky to be alive and well, and mostly suffered broken teeth and neck problems....when the chain, hooked between my 627 and a Steiger tractor, broke and hit him in the mouth! Scared the sh*t out of me, I thought for sure he was dead. Don't tow with chains, guys, and stay well clear when towing! alan627b
I seen in the newspaper here a few weeks ago about a crew of drillers on a site who went to lunch, came back and started drilling again (they were drilling 60" x 40 ft deep holes) and they discovered that the inspector came by during lunch and fell into the hole. This was determined when he arrived at the top with the first load of muck on the auger. Apparently they did not cover their hole before leaving it unnatended. The inspector should not have been there alone, but the hole should never be left open and ungaurded. Its too late for the inspectors lesson, but the crew will remember forever now that its too late
Because I Was Inverted.... What I learned, the hard way, was if you can't see what is under the vegetation, get down and walk the area. The slope I was up on, along I-80 west of Omaha, was generally a 3 to 1, but steepened up as it approached a culvert under the highway. But with weeds 4 feet high, I couldn't see it.... I was stripping this slope, so we could fill against it. This was in late summer, and the ground was dry and baked hard as a brick. I felt the slope starting to get steeper, and was coming down the way I was taught. Shift into 1st or 2nd gear, stay off the rear throttle and turn downhill, and keep the pan low...it almost worked, until the rear tire on the downhill side fell into a washout, and over she went! I had both ends shut off within a minute, after I determined I was ok. Thank God for ROPS and seatbelts! All that really got damaged, was 1 air cleaner, a couple of stacks and the mufflers. It bent the spill wrack and i fender a little. And they had to put the pin that fell out back in.... As you can see, it was hardly cherry before it went over. And it was back in action my mid-day on Monday! This happened on a Friday, about half an hour before quitting time.... alan627b
More carnage...
Glad you didn't get hurt. Like you said ROPS and seat belts DO save lives. :yup
More yet!
And still they keep coming! I'm glad the brush pile was there. They brought in a Cat 320 or 325, cleared the brush pile out from under it. Reached over and pulled it about halfway over, then tracked around to the other side, and pushed it the rest of the way.
Were not done yet!
Digging it out....
Digging some more...
Coming back over...
627's aren't side dumps... Right side up!:notworthy I don't recomend rolling one over, but I do recoomend ROPS cabs and WEARING SEATBELTS!!!!!
I see you have the bail and hook set up you spoke of in the other post. It doesn't appear the smiley on the push bar suffered any damage. :bouncegri
It doesn't appear the smiley on the push bar suffered any damage. :bouncegri[/QUOTE] And you know, three years later, that smiley is still on it! We don't use pushcats or push pulls all that much, mostly because 1) There aren't that many scrapers in the fleet that haven't had the bails welded up, for one reason or other, 2) Too many independents, not enough guys that can or will work together 3) hard to find 2 scrapers matched closely enough in power to do it Most of what i operate is , shall we say, well used..... I'm getting wrist surgery this Wednesday, partly due to running the old iron. It gets different people in different ways. I might not be typing for awhile after tomorrow. alan627b
I really hate that when it happens.:yup Thanks for the photos.
Looks like an awfull lot of trouble to go through for an oil change.
the cat just wanted some sun on its belly
Alan Did you teach her to sit up and beg after you perfected laying down and rolling over?:bouncegri
I think you ment rolling over and then laying down.
WOW Talk about a Maalox moment! I hope everything goes well on the surgery Alan.
here I thought he was just using a new technique to unload. Just kidding, but in all seriousness hope everything goes well this week and its good to hear you were wearing your seatbelt.
The surgery went fine, they put you under, do the deed and it seemed like no time later, I woke up in recovery! The left wrist is a bit sore, more of an annoyance than real pain. The real pain is trying to open anything...and it slows my 2 finger typing speed up a little...but if it fixes my arm going to sleep all the time, it will be worth it! Thanks for the concern, everybody! The accident happened right alongside the Interstate, where everybody could see it. I took the pictures just to beat anyone else to the punch, and I thought maybe someone could benefit from the experience. You know the funny thing about the rollover, my last words when it happened were the same ones most commonly heard on black boxes just before a plane crashes..... "OH ****!!!!! I swear it's true..... Flip
Glad to hear everything went well :scool and as for the two finger typing I wish I could use two fingers at once.
Alan627B , awesome photos . THANK YOU VERY MUCH ...... I'll have nightmares now . Glad to hear the surgery went OK . Was it Carparal Tunnel Syndrome that caused the numbness ? I've often suffered from it , waking up in the morning with numb hands/wrists , and they would get so inflammed that I'd have a bump on each wrist . Last summer I hand to go to see a doctor it got so bad ,but after some meds and a splint ,things healed up after a couple of weeks or so . I do worry that as i get older it may get worse . I loved the photo of the side of the cab where the window frame is made out of plywood . I too used to work for outfits that would just patch stuff together to keep it going . If it got too hot in the summer , the foreman would just tell you to quit whining and boot out a window if you didn't like it . Of course , this meant two things . Number one , you'd eat dirt and dust all day , and sweat , so you'd be black by the end of the day . Number two , come fall and it started to get cold ( and it can get really cold , very early up here ) you'd freeze and get snow AND dust swirling around the inside of the cab , so you'd just couldn't win . Anyhowww , thanks for the memories . I used to really like running scrapers , and especially so when teamed up with another twin operator and we worked well together . It was such a great feeling to get into a syncronous rhythm with another operator and you both just boogied . I loved the ease of loading with an extra two motors pushing/pulling . Except in the lune xxxx or frost , that is .... Thanks !! Rob
Hello Blademan, I see you have a good eye. When you work for Flintstone Excavating, you gotta do what you can to keep warm! We had a good guy in our shop, who made these plywood windows, with removable plexiglass, so you could close the cab up to suit the temperature, leaving the frame in place helped keep the heat away in summer, as it was when these were taken.. Walling up that side and the door side is usually enough until it gets really cold..I'd still rather have the EROPS with heat and AC though... I just got back from the doc this morning, getting the stitches out from my carpal tunnel release. The numbness is getting better, hope it leaves completely. In two weeks, I have to get the right wrist done, for tendonitus this time. The right wrist gets to hurting real bad, probably caused from sawing my arm off self loading this junk...back and forth on a lever with 10 or 20 pound pull, about 10,000 times a day...when you are reliable you get to work alone a lot. That, and it's hard to find two of our operators or scrapers that can work together, but I like it when it happens. Push pulling rules with 2 or 3 good operators, and we've had up to 4 hooked together at one time....stuff happens real fast with a string of 4! Funny, I always thought scrapers were supposed to ruin your back and kidneys, not your arm and hands! What a drag it is getting old... Here's my ride from last spring, when I worked out in Arizona, notice the slight improvement..... alan627b
Alan How did you like that 21, I demoed one when they first came out. Told the boss to get them if they could turn up the rotation of the auger, it loaded to damn slow. We got one but that was it since there are a lot of old utilities in the ground out here, and if you don't get them all with the rippers you spend the next day cleaning 200lbs of wire off the auger.
man that a caddy next to what u were runnin
Dozerboy, you are right on about the auger speed, although it loaded fine in the fine soil I was working with, if you didn't crowd it too hard. We had to clear old plastic sprinkler type hose off the auger a few times, as this area used to be an irrigated field. I don't think it would load the heavy clay we have here worth a damn, however. I think this thing loaded about as easy as one of our 627's would have, in the same soil. I'd still rather have that second engine though.... I used to come into the cut, shift into first or second, and hit the throttle lock and load until it was full. It was odd, getting off work and still being clean...a guy could get used to that! I wish cat had thought up that low effort, single lever control 20 or 30 years ago... alan627b
Nice Ride But A Bit Hi-Tech? Hi, Alan. That 621G looks like a nice ride but how did you cope with all that technology that wasn't 30/40 years old? LOL. Pleased to hear your wrist surgery went O.K. How's it going now? All well, I hope.
That was beautiful, mate. Keep up the good work.:wink2 :naughty
road closed non believers as i call them im with ya there !!!! I was digging out soft spots in a road and parked my excavator off to one side of the road so trucks bringing in stone could dump in the hole! This was @ lunch time i was sitting in the excavator eating and waiting 4 trucks to show ,when a 4x4 pickup drove around 2 road closed signs he thought he was going 2 drive around the excavator i saw him and jumped out waved my arms in the air to stop him,he drove right in the hole......hahahahaha...... good thing i put the stone in lifts the hole was 3 feet deep he drove in 1foot 1/2 ! when i pulled out his truck he said i saw the road closed signs ,but it didn't say hole in road !!!! as they say HERES UR SIGN STUPID !!!!!!!
Danger-No entry signs would probably work.Who told him you were working the area he entered ?
Working this June (winter here in the Southern Hemisphere) I was busy burning fire breaks with neighbours. One morning, I ride with the lorry and tractor and all the labour to meet the farmer and start the burn. This particular day we had had heavy frost, and starting the burn midway up the slope and working down to the bottom of the valley was going to be difficult. Unfortunately, I had to leave, so having convened with my labour supervisors and the farmer, we decided to start at the top of the slope and work our way down. I left. I come back at around lunch time, to find the controlled burn running away on the neighbour's side. His labour was too few, so my labour had to help him put it out. Turns out the farmer told my supervisors there was no way they were going to start at the top, he lit up midway up the slope and told my guys to burn uphill. Despite his being on the up-slope side of the burn, he made my guys burn ahead. No wonder the fire ran away. Once my guys had gotten his side under control, he got in his pick up and sped off. We finished the burn, no more mistakes. He then proceeded to stop me on the road the following day and cuss me and my labour out for his stupidity. Turns out that all of the farmers in the area know him to be a top notch ***hole. Go figure.
Yesterday after we had gotten off track, I got a report from one of the guys working in my gang, "I heard "x" yelling and when I looked up, he was standing on the pusher(we're using a backhoe to slide rail and built a custom pusher bar that replaces the forks) and "Y" had him picked as high in the air as he could. "X" was up there swinging a sledge around above his head."
There is a chain Chinese fast food project going on close to my yard, bid on it but didn't get it. This is an outparcel at a large suburban mall, adjacent to I-65, fronting a well traveled 4 lane HWY. Anyway I was riding by last week and saw a guy on a 4x4 pallet, on a rental Lull, 15' in the air putting some sort of synthetic siding on. I figured the super had left as it was around 5 PM.. The next day I rode by at 10 AM and the guy was on the pallet again.. The lack of basic safety on some of these sights amazes me.:beatsme It would be just my luck to be finishing up my portion of work and OSHA show up to nail this sub and the GC - then proceed to give us a level one inspection as well..
I guess that low bidder did not have enough money in his bid to do it safely. I bet he don't have enough to pay the insurance after the idiot falls and breaks his neck either. It is a shame to have to compete with idiots like that, they screw up the prices in a whole market area.
Yeah Jerry it's all about speed and money sometimes. This GC is from out of state, travels and builds retail accounts. All the contracts I see now a days have a clause in them that the sub is responsible for it's own safety and if the GC gets an OSHA fine due to the action of a sub, the sub has to compensate the GC for all the costs associated. I think it creates a culture of not caring, since the GC is covered monetarily. :beatsme It would get interesting if the GC gets a repeat violation via a different sub on a new project.:cool2
It is sad that the GC treats the subs that way. You would think with heavy handed tactics like that, they would run out of subs to bid to them, but a new sucker or two pos up to replace every on that goes broke working for these kind of crooked contractors.
Jerry, every contract I have come across in the last 3 years has this type of language. However as we all know, not all GC's are the same. Some I have worked for are very safety conscious and others not so much. Expectedly, the larger the GC, the more safety conscious. Personally I don't have a big issue with the clause per se, as we try to be safety conscious and follow the law. Here's the problem I have with the blow and go mentality - being on a job with other subs that don't give a damn but blow and go. OSHA man drives by, writes those guys up and decides to give us an inspection as well. Two birds, one stone.. Fortunately work is picking up here and I am finally able to start shifting from hard bid to more negotiated projects and not have to deal with the lowest bid mentality.
Say when.. Ok there? more. There? little more. There? OK More? Thats good....