Teaching the tricks of Grading

[Deas Plant]

Rollers are NOT boring.

Hi, Digger242J.
Again, it's your attitude that governs whether the job is boring or not. You can have a LOT of FUN with a roller, especially a smooth-drum following a grader. With a little knowledge and undertsanding, you can annoy the hell out of the grader operator by rolling his crown sideways. You can even do it to opposites sides in alternate sections so that the crown has a 'staggered' appearance. This will usually cause steam to issue from the grader operator's favourite ears, giving the grader the appearance of being steam-powered. Then you take photos of the said steam-powered grader and post them here on HEF.

Another little trick for a roller operator is to get right up behind the grader as he is finishing his pass. He throws the grader into reverse and begins backing up, only to run smack into the front of the roller. That usually gets their attention focussed on where they are going when reversing, which makes for improved safety on the job. It may also make for a steam-powered grader and more photos on HEF.

Or, you can roll his dumped road base or fill BEFORE he gets to spread it. This will often cause the grader operator to make like a demented windmill with copious quantities of unprintable verbage directed towards the offending roller operator. Rolling the windrows is usually good for a blast too.

Hey, Grader4me, Randy and Northart, how am I doing so far? LOL.

Mind you, it has been said before and may well be said again that smooth-drum rollers are only kept on the job to fix grader operator's mistakes. LOL.

 

[Randy Krieg]

Very Well Spoken

:exactly

Deas

Only personal experience could write that kind of statement with such color and flavor. I knew an old blademan that all his roller hands referred to him as the "The Windmill"! :waving Your comments brought back some memories of him.

On a serious note though, a good roller hand will make or break ya. I have been blessed with some great ones and I’ve had some that really caused me to blow a gasket. My favorite trick is when they leave the vibe on and change directions. ops This generally results in something, which resembles a thermo nuclear detonation inside the grader cab then followed by a large mushroom cloud. :cussing

I sometimes tape derogatory signs to the ripper for my roller hands to read; just to get a good laugh. :nono

I have told many young guys that want to learn how to operate a motor grader, go run roller behind a good blademan, watch how he does thinks. See how he manages his material, how he uses the water truck, how he directs and manages the roller. That’s how I got started; rolling behind my Dad. My dad always got great checkups at the dentist since he flossed his teeth with my rear-end hairs on a regular basis. When I screwed up his grade, Oh man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Best lessons I ever learned. My father is now 72, still in excellent shape and when I can keep up with him on a grader I will finally feel I have mastered it, but I guaranty that won’t be happening anytime soon. :my2c

I have met many a man who tell me there the greatest :soapbox on one these things, but I have only seen a few that really impress me.:IMO

Regards, Randy

 

[w2bstoned]

Wow thanks guys never thought I would get this kind of a response...

 

[Grader4me]

Hey, Grader4me, Randy and Northart, how am I doing so far? LOL.

Doin great Deas! Great Story. I tell the roller operator to stay to heck out of my way and I'll tell him when to roll when I'm levelling and fine grading.
Spreading asphalt I've had a few times when I've cursed the roller operator. Making that final pass along the edge of the road, asphalt rolling off the moldboard in a nice flow, keeping the grader as straight as an arrow making that perfect straight edge, looking as though it was done with a asphalt spreader. Look in the mirror at your beautiful job and then to your utter horror here comes the roller guy weaving in and out on the edge of the hot asphalt, making my perfect straight line looking like it was spread by a drunk:cussing

Yeah..the roller guy...

 

[w2bstoned]

Yeah,,, What do you expect from those guys that can't operate... A messy job

 

[pabear52]

Oh yes, I remember now, the roller guy... Hey Mario from Cookes in Vic ... you would run up on the freshly dumped heaps of clay the tippers had just put there with the vibrating padfoot and tighten them all up before I could spread them with the blade and laughing like hell. You knew it annoyed me, but hey you were a good workmate and I enjoyed your company, hope alls good with you.

 

[digger242j]

Hi, Digger242J.
Again, it's your attitude that governs whether the job is boring or not.

Obviously, Deas, you are blessed with a better imagination than I. :notworthy

I haven't done much rolling following a grader, but I have done some compaction on dirt jobs. One particular one I remember was compacting fill inside an old building foundation. I was literally falling asleep, but when the machine bumped into the wall at either end, it would wake me up, at least long enough to change direction.

 

[Turbo21835]

Obviously, Deas, you are blessed with a better imagination than I. :notworthy

I haven't done much rolling following a grader, but I have done some compaction on dirt jobs. One particular one I remember was compacting fill inside an old building foundation. I was literally falling asleep, but when the machine bumped into the wall at either end, it would wake me up, at least long enough to change direction.

Find me a guy that can stay awake for a 12 hour shift on a smooth drum roller, and ill find a job for him somewhere. The only thing worse than running a smooth drum is running it in -10 deg temps

 

[Deas Plant]

Not The Victim _ Just The Spectator

Hi, Randy.
Fortunately, I have never been the 'victim' of the antics described above. Not one of the roller operators that I ever worked with did any of those things to me but I have seen them done a time or two to other grader operators. I got into the habit very early in my grader operating career of having a little chat with my roller operator(s) BEFORE they did any of the above.

I had the benefit of somebody else's experience before I actually had to do it myself. The guy who gave me my only anything-like-formal instruction on a grader, a whole 1 hour's worth, told me about those sorts of 'tricks' and made the suggestion about the above appraoch to dealing with the problem. He also mentioned that graders have seats for the specific purpose of having bums parked in them. I was a good pupil - largely 'cos I am too lazy to stand up and I don't like doing things twice. LOL.

I'd never claim to be in your class as a grader operator and I suspect that one or two others on this site may have a little more grader experience than I do too, including that 'old fossil' up there in Talkeetna. LOL. I have spent too little of my total operating career on graders to be one of the really good ones. How-wevver, I have done enough to know the basics and have left one or two 'experts' scratching their heads over the years. Like you, I have heard a lot 'experts' over the years and have not been hugely impressed in a favourable way by many of them when they have to strut their stuff.

'Expert' - an 'ex' is either a has-been or an unknown quantity and a 'spurt' is a drip under pressure.

Here is a little story from a book that I am writing in my spare(?) time:

"On this same job, we had a 30-ton hydraulic excavator, one of those machines with the long arm ‘thingy’ on the front that digs holes wherever people want holes dug (and sometimes where they don’t). This machine spent most of it time loading trucks with one sort of stuff or another, anything from rubbish to good clay fill. The operator of this machine, whom we’ll call Shane, was quite capable at his job although not one of the real top-liners. He had also spent enough time on several other machines, including graders, that he could also operate them reasonably well.

One day, Shane asked me if he could have a play on my grader for the last hour of the day while I ran his excavator. I agreed, we swapped and off he went. When I next saw him at knock-off time, without waiting for me to say anything, he came straight out and said, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” I asked, “What are you talking about?” He replied, “I’ve just been working my arse off on that grader. You look as if you just sit up there and let it happen.”

The above-mentioned grader was an old machine, an early Cat 14G, that didn’t have much in the way of brakes and had a few idiosyncrasies of its own but could still do a fair day’s work - IF you knew its tricks. I did.

This ‘appearance’ of ‘just sitting there and letting it happen’ or of ‘not seeming to be busy’ can often be the hallmark of a really good operator, some-one who knows exactly how to get the machine to do what he wants it to do and who does not get flustered when faced with a ticklish situation or a heavy workload. Such operators are usually very smooth, very accurate and very pretty to watch."

End of story.

 

[Motor Grader]

As a manufacturer we are seeing a shortage of operators. Just last week I actually a had a sale go cold because the owner lost his operator. Future plans for us are to develope a real motor grader training school where anyone can send their operators to learn basic and advanced grading techniques. My plan is to hire experienced grader experts to do the teaching. I just hope I can get my school launched before we run out of operators.

 

[CAT DEMONSTR8R]

CAT has been ready to go operatorless for sometime now, they have had a rigidframe truck in tinaja hills running for a many number of years with out an operator. real time kinematic GPS is going to take all of our jobs lol

 

[Deas Plant]

Grader school.

Hi, Brian.
It shouldn't take long to set up the school. The HARD part will be accreditation and all the attendant BS paperwork.

If you offer Randy and Northart a good 'retirement' package, you may be able to win them. I faintly suspect it would be hard to get 2 better operators together. Perhaps the promise of warm winters in So-Cal or Florida might be good bait. LOL. Maybe that other old fossil, wotzizzname, Grader4me, would come along to 'boil the billy' for smoko and lunch. LOL.

Then again, if the school was up in the Arctic circle and the students learned to operate a grader well in a 'skating rink', they ought to be able to do it well anywhere.

Something that I would have liked to do would be to set up an operators school where people actually were taught how to do jobs with the machines instead of just moving windrows or piles of dirt around. There is not one of the operator training schools that I have seen around here that are turning out operators that you can put on a job and know that they will be able to do at least a fair job of it.

Good luck with that project but don't wait too long. We're all getting older.

 

[Northart]

Graders and Operators

Hello Randy,

Nice pictures of your work travels . Interesting to see the tire tread pattern on the Cat 24H grader, never seen one quite like that. Wish I'd get to the Cat proving grounds someday, to offer my 2 cents in one some equipment.

The Cat H Series graders are terriffic, not so sure of the M series . I'd have to actually run them, to be more sure of my views. Sat in the seat and scrutinized them closely. Time will tell.

Hello Deas Plant,

Been busy with my stuff and place, getting ready to return to the grader seat. Finish up last years job.

Trees are budding out now and the pollen is heavy in the air and ground. Pollen allergy time , At least the snow is gone.

Anyway, remarking on the roller hands job, they sure can make or break any blade mans job in a hurry. Usually I've had enough clout with the management, to say whether they stay or go ! Sometimes must hold school though on the job. I watch their work like a hawk, coordinate the roller and water truck operations . It becomes a team effort. Once people understand that , they become aware of when and where they should be at all times.

Anyway , later, Northart

 

[Deas Plant]

On teaching the rest of the crew.

Hi, Northart.
I can relate to holding school on the job. I've had to do it a number of times myself. I will be forever thankful to old Harry who gave me the only anything like formal instruction that I ever had on running a grader, all one hour of it. It was he who told me to carefully evaluate the 'talents' amongst the rest of the crew in any finishing work that I was doing and 'edjumackayte' those who came up short. Then watch 'em to see that they did things the way I wanted them done. It was he who told me that the grader operator 'runs' the job, answerable to the foreman/supervisor and that results will often speak louder than rank, i.e., leading hands.

The first job I ever had a crew working with me on was for the state government's Main Roads Department in Western Australia in 1967. I was running a Cat 12 8T grader that was on 'wet' hire to the department to widen a section of state highway. We were using bush gravel for the formation and a process known locally as water-binding to compact and seal it ready for a two-coat bitumen and stone chip topping. I had never done it before but had had it explained to me in detail - - - - - and it worked. I did have a helpful foreman from the Main Roads department in charge of the job but the crew were all pretty experienced at this work anyway 'cos that was almost all they did. They shifted from job to job as a crew and were kept pretty busy all the time.

It could be said that they worked under a bit of a handicap 'cos they kept getting new hired grader operators to break in on the different jobs. I sympathise with the poor ******* a bit 'cos they got me as green as grass but I didn't hear any complaints. Maybe they were an exceptionally polite bunch?

Just as a side note, when that job was finished, I had to road that grader 329 miles back to the yard in Perth, around 18 hours driving over 3 days with repairs to a broken main fuel pipe along the way. Earlier, I'd had to pick it up from 70 miles East of Perth and drive it up to the job at the 329 mile peg on the Great Eastern Highway, Western Australia, a tiny blot on the map called Bullabulling. Google Earth it for chuckles.

So spring is springing around your way? Good stuff. Now you can go out and earn an honest living. LOL.

Catchyalater.

 

[Stripeyjack]

Bullabulling hey?.... thats a fair ol' drive, especially on a grader:dizzy. Still I s'pose you could've been further out around Widgiemooltha or Cocklebiddy
Cheers:beerchug
Stripeyjack

 

[pabear52]

Mmmm, operatorless grader with fancy gps? I'd like to see that. Couple of stumps and rocks on the shoulder will jerk er into gear real quick I reckon.

Maintenance grading for instance often done by the operators "feel" and what he can see and what the seat of his pants tells him and more than likely with little material to work with say like couple of empty beer cans, cigarette packets and a few gum leaves thrown in.

On a lot of materials rolled in and sealed off, with too much downpressure and cut it will "tear" and break away in sheets. GPS, dunno, dunno??

However, it is good to see some positive comment on the M Series on this board, must have some feel left there somewhere.

 

[Grader4me]

Hi, Brian.
If you offer Randy and Northart a good 'retirement' package, you may be able to win them. I faintly suspect it would be hard to get 2 better operators together. Perhaps the promise of warm winters in So-Cal or Florida might be good bait. LOL. Maybe that other old fossil, wotzizzname, Grader4me, would come along to 'boil the billy' for smoko and lunch. LOL.

What ever job you would want me to do Deas! Maybe I could just be there to help you old folks up into the graders

 

[Deas Plant]

A fair drive

Hi, Stripeyjack.
Welkum too ther 4um.

Yeah, I coulda bin outa round Warburton Mission or even Giles. Spare a thought for Grader Garbo who graded all those roads originally with Len Beadell and the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party. They musta bin one tough bunch of blokes.

If I had bin outa round Warburton or Giles, Ida needed a with me to get home. LOL.

I pulled up in Kellerberrin on the second night and parked the grader across the road from the pub - since burned down - against the tin fence along the railway yard. I fired the pilot motor up at 6.00 am the next morning on a dead still morning. It echoed VERY nicely all across Kellerberrin for a couple of minutes until I got the diesel fired up and got outa there ---- ahead of any vigilantes. LOL.

 

[Deas Plant]

Whatever job, huh???????

Hi, Grader4me.
In your decrepit state, I figured boiling the billy would be a reasonable work load for you. LOL. As regards helping us up into the machines, I dunno about Randy and Northart but I'm still fairly capable of getting up there myself. It's not all that long ago that I had to climb 5, repeat, FIVE, steps to get up into a grader. I know I'm only a little feller but I could just reach up high enough to put my lunchbox on the footplate before I climbed the 'Empire State Building'. LOL.

Please see the attached photo. This is an O&K G350 grader, one of only 34 made. It has a Cummins 855 'donk' at 400 hp, weighs 42 tons and has a 20 foot blade. It also carries a 4 shank ripper across the back end with shanks almost as big as a Cat D7E, F or G.

How about you? Could you make it up those step into that cab? LOL.

 

[MKTEF]

Maybee you old dogs should stop barking at each other...:jerry

Your without teeth, and soon tecnology has passed u all.:deadhorse

The memorys of pony engines, ether, standing operating, black smoke and long, high, steps in black and white photos will soon be the only thing left.
:stirthepot:stirthepot:stirthepot