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A recent job

AzIron

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,541
Location
Az
The big thing for me was I bought the trailer used changed tires once had a real hard time with the hub that came apart but that was 7 months ago I changed tires whoever did the tires before I bought it over tightened it

In my life I have changed thousands of hub pilots tires never seen studs break so it's a learning experience and needless to say the other three hubs are getting new studs and nuts
 

JLarson

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2020
Messages
656
Location
AZ
Occupation
Owner- civil and heavy repair/fab company
I've seen plenty chowdered up studs or plain busted off when guys go after everything with the 1" gun. I'm the same way, I won't touch it unless we do all of them, cause more then likely somebody got them all, or at least several of them.
 

DMiller

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
16,432
Location
Hermann, Missouri
Occupation
Cheap "old" Geezer
I may use a 1" to remove them but they do go on with a 3/4 and NOT hammered to death, allows the torque wrench to actually swing some before clicks(We do our own tires at the local company).
 

AzIron

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,541
Location
Az
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Just a fire line repair came down saturday to expose it and shut it off I was running pretty good ductal looked like swiss cheese we guessed its probably at least 60 years old

The building is or was a main post office for downtown I thought the curb stamp was cool its dated 1937 and looks better than some bee curb around the corner
 

AzIron

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Jun 14, 2016
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1,541
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Az
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Did this a while back rented a 320 next gen with rubber pads nice machine but not sure I want to own one

Anyway the pit is for a press its 9 foot below finish floor to top of concrete so we dug to 10 feet in depth the gc had the piles and lagging done by a shoring contractor piles are 20 feet long they used a 330 with a drill there was only 2 feet of clearance with the roof to do the drill

That pit was about 1200 yards of dirt all of it went into dump trucks and was piled on the property next door took about 4 days there were a lot of other details things we dug but they frowned on taking pictures
 

AzIron

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Jun 14, 2016
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Being the customer was a concrete company they wanted to slurry backfill the pit but there budget and export problems convinced them to have us backfill with native

Only took 2 days and 38 major overloads on the 14 to make it happen I think that poor truck had dirt falling off it every time he pulled in the building

In reality this was probably one of the more fascinating jobs I have been in on because of all the detail work and the sequences to make it happen the crew that ran it were top notch and easy to deal with and had ther **** together
 

AzIron

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Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
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Got this phone call on a Saturday machine had been digging footings on the cleanest potato dirt we have been in for a long time at this point we had been on that job a month so the job was not the cause

Anyway machine was 4 months out of warranty and this happened definitely a bad casting with 3920 hours on the meter it broke this happened same week deere factory went on strike took a month to get a new dipper

I called my sales man he had no machines I could rent but I will give deere a lot of credit they warranted the part and the shipping cost to get it here in full I know my sales man had a big part in that but I was really impressed that item was over 7 grand that took most of sting away of not having the machine for a month
 

John C.

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Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
12,865
Location
Northwest
Occupation
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
They probably didn't want to see the failure posted up for all there world to see. I'm guessing they knew it was a failure in workmanship and materials.

Failures just out of warranty are the worst kind. Nobody wins and everyone looks bad.
 

Welder Dave

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2014
Messages
12,259
Location
Canada
Worst customer service I had was a couple years ago at a Ford dealership and Ford itself.. I took my truck in for a service as part of the service agreement I had purchased. They informed me the valve covers and oil pan was leaking which was a common problem on Eco boost engines. This was just after the warranty ran out (time wise not mileage wise) because of Covid. Recommendations at the time were to stay home unless it was absolutely necessary to go into stores or shops. They had the valve cover gaskets and replaced them on warranty but had to order all the parts to repair the leaking oil pan gasket. There were 2 service bulletins issued for the oil pan leaks. Then they informed me the oil pan leaks weren't covered as it was out of warranty. It was about 2 weeks past the warranty date. The service manager was on holidays and the assistant service manager was worse than useless. She said Ford said no and there was nothing she could do. She gave me a number to call Ford. I had to call a couple times and they said there was nothing they could and my warranty was way over the mileage. It wasn't but the guy then said Ford uses formula to calculate/guess the mileage of a customers vehicle. They estimated I had well over 100,000kms. when the actual mileage was about 91,000kms. which is still under warranty. What a farce.
I waited a week until the service manager got back. I called him and he said he had looked at what's going on and it made no sense to him why Ford would cover the valve covers but not the oil pan. He called someone at Ford that he's known for awhile and they agreed the oil pan should be covered under warranty and got it approved. Interesting is the police F150's oil pans were covered under a recall. Oil pan leaks on regular customers vehicles aren't considered a safety issue which requires a recall if it involves large numbers of vehicles. Really amazing to me is when I called to speak to the service manager, the asst. service manager answered the phone. She said great news we got your oil pan covered under warranty. She had absolutely nothing to do with it and was quite rude to me saying Ford said no and there's nothing I can do. The dealership has lost my business strictly because if her. My friend is a mechanic there and he even said she's a piece of work. The only reason she works there is because her father is a mechanic there.
 

sfrs4

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Joined
Jul 22, 2013
Messages
683
Location
Great Britian
Occupation
parts admin
I have had both ends of the scale with service departments, the bad was so bad I ended up dragging the service manager over his desk and outside to the car.. and the good was a KIA with 7 year warranty that even after the 7 years they did "warranty" work to a leaky air conditioning pipe because " that shouldn't have happened".
 

AzIron

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Jun 14, 2016
Messages
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Location
Az
So it's been a long while since I posted and man have we been busy

Really I have hardly any good pictures of work cause we have been doing jobs that are all confidential let's just say don't say data center. And because of that I have really gotten out of the habit of taking pictures but lots of new equipment keeps showing up20221216_152136.jpg20231218_132453.jpg
Both of these showed up at the end of last year I waited 11 months for that backhoe to show up exactly 1 year later it has 1100 hrs I guess we really needed it and the komatsu has been one of the most surprising investments I have made as soon as I bought that more work appeared for it been really handy for digging Plumbing on tilt ups especially the 200 thousand plus sq ft with 1000 ft long runs exiting the building at 13 ft to 15 ft deep20231218_132131.jpg20231218_131917.jpg

The loader came along with the bigger excavator that 220 would bury 2 backhoes moving dirt

I bought a 314 in 2020 and it is hands down the handiest machine for commercial work with everything going on right now I needed another one so I made a deal on this machine thru the cat dealer and I signed another contract that week that required us to put guaranteed iron on a job so I ended up buying a second one that same but it was a little older being a c model and was a good deal so we going to make the original 314 the backup machine but in 2 and a half months it hasn't been back to the yard and the 2 newer ones are out on jobs as well
 

AzIron

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Jun 14, 2016
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Az
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We started doing fine grade for concrete last fall and got serious about it this spring it seems to contribute well with digging footings and backfilling for sub grade so after a few years of saying no I figured out we could make money at it so I bought a levels best box and a skid steer I am pretty pleased with this move tho there is a crap load of hand work and I am lazzy20230407_132430.jpg
This is what happens when no one wants to drive 2 and a half hrs back to get iron you figure out how to make it work and man was there a lot more weight than you think on there
 

DGODGR

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Joined
Dec 18, 2009
Messages
1,062
Location
S/W CO
It seems like quite a jump from when last I checked in to this thread. IIRC you were banging rocks on customs. Now it looks like you working big commercial stuff. I've never been one to operate out of fear, but I've heard many people in this industry warn me about growing too fast. Obviously the debt service is easy as long as things stay busy. The term "feast or famine" comes to mind. I hope that you continue feasting.
Funny that you mentioned that the workload jumped with the purchase of the 220. The same thing happened to me. I had been a backhoe guy for quite a long time. They were the primary tool of my employment. A Cat 416B was my first purchase. Backhoes are the "Swiss Army knife" of heavy equipment. When I bought my first excavator, it really opened up what I could possibly do. Sure, it was a much larger purchase than a backhoe was, but the amount of work that one can do with one is much greater as well. With each larger machine I've purchased, the work for it came, and my business grew.
 

AzIron

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Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,541
Location
Az
To be honest debt is still something I hate the only thing I have purchased on the list that got fianced was the backhoe only cause it was brand new the rest was paid cash. With interest rates the way they are I refuse to finance used equipment at this point but I get the point

The biggest reason I went head long into some more excavators was I needed them for a job and because of outlandish schedule demands I can't have downtime plus this particular job that we have going keeps getting bit off in pretty sizable chunks and the master plan will keep us busy till end of next year and with the money that's been invested by the client to get this far they probably won't stop


As for what we used to do i still do customs and rock got a couple of those going right now a few of my commercial customers have really grown and that's one thing that pushed us up was we kinda grew with them

The only other big change was we bought a vac truck this year I will post on that later tonight its quite the saga
 

AzIron

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Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,541
Location
Az
Rreally didn't see those purchase coming and I was really not sure I wanted in this line of work but the vac trailer I have kept getting us in trouble with little jobs that it could just barely do for one reason or another

Followed by the local vac services are really sticking it to people I got charged 4 grand for a 10 hr day last April and the forman for the vac service kinda told me in a lot of words call somone else he doesn't care they are extorting us cause they can so in that regard I have 4 customers that were hearing the same thing so it prompted me to start looking and it was old used up piles for 150 grand plus or brand new at 500 plus and a 9 to 10 month wait neither option was appealing so we searched hard found this in North Dakota and brought it back.

With all the data center work we are doing I needed one anyway we are having to guarantee numbers for vac work owning a truck seems a lot less risky to guarantee a cost for 20231222_132143.jpg

I really like the truck it's really stout the verdict is still out on electronics tho that stuff doesn't seem all that simple and it has a few quirks but I think it's as much or more about learning the truck and how to operate it surprisingly there is quite an art into doing that work
 
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