Heavy Equipment Operator Tales

[Gold Maven]

Saw another thread regarding operators, and didn't realize there were so many of us here.

How about telling some of your stories, I've got a few good ones. Here's one.

I was building a bridge on a county road, with an extreme skew, so that the abutment footings were twice as long as normal. I was running the job, and the excavator digging the footer about 4' below the creek level. Typical footer with tons of steel, and 5 guys in the hole tying steel.

I'm trying to get the last 30' dug so we could pour the concrete, when I begin to run into some obstacles.

First I'm working under un-coated power lines, that are so low I can barely get my bucket out of the hole with out getting too close. Next there is a 2" gas line on one side of the hole, and a small phone line on the other. And to top it all off, I stir up a yellow-jacket nest under my machine, and they are swarming the cab. Good times!

I got her dug and poured with out any trouble, amazingly.

 

[truckinbutch]

Even a blind hog will get an acorn once in a while Ya got danged lucky

 

[truckinbutch]

17 and full of piss and wind I took a B Model Mack tandem /lowboy to a coal mine pump site to crane load a pump/motor combination . Frost freeze-egg shell sloping clay road through a steeply sloping pasture field that ended in a rock cliff .
Asked the site foreman about getting a dozer to tie on to get me around the hill . He told me the last guy in there didn't need no damn dozer .
Testosterone beat common sense and I got every bit of 200 yards before the drives filled with clay muck and truck, trailer , and me went slipsliden away to the rock cliff . A lone poplar tree kept us from dropping over the cliff .
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Foreman showed up and started *****in ,"That's what the last damn driver did .................................!"
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That's when I hit him ............