What is the most terrifying thing that taught you a lesson?

Fitted a Birdseye Wagway tree shredder disc to a PC220-5, and made it work with two V60? Flow divider valves on the pump outputs, to achieve the 35-60gpm required to run.

Boss insisted on the flow being on the high side, so 60gpm it is (I did a switch for 1pump, 2 pump anyways). Placed a 1" opening screen guard on the cab, and tested it for operation.

Job foreman comes down to operate it. First pass, he sends a football sized chunk of tree past me @ over 60yards away. I'm done. It works.

Several weeks pass and the assigned operator, having finished felling trees, decides to shred a brush pile the dozer created. Not heeding the instructions of never see the teeth while in operation, he dips the disc down and finds a wrought iron fence within. Two pieces launch toward the cab, with one striking the cab side boom cylinder barrel, leaving a 3/8" deep gouge on its way to ricocheting through the cab side window and out the entry door. The second piece fit perfectly through the 1" mesh guard, the tempered front window, grazed the hair off the operator's head, and left a 1/2" hole in the rear cab sheetmetal top radius. Somewhere out there is a PC220-5 with a work lamp mounted on top rear of the cab.

Bought a $1300 piece of 4'x5'x1-1/4" bullet resistant lean and fitted it to front of the cab, yet, no one would elect to continue operating it.

Sold the attachment at auction. The contractor who bought it never did pay us for the lexan, which was not part of the auction.

kshansen said:

Well while we are talking about teeth, this is not all that terrifying but more embarrassing!

A few years back I had got the old Yam XS650 running after repairing the engine out of another bike. This XS650 was a barn find and had probably not been on the road for a few years before I bought it in 2000 and now it was another 15 or more years old!

One cold day, maybe just slightly above freezing, I finally got to the point I could start it. I actually sounded pretty good so I decided to run it down the driveway, about 175 feet, and back to the garage.

Ran good in first gear to the highway and did the u-turn and gave it a little throttle in first up the slight rise. About 75 feet from the garage let off throttle and touched the brakes. I am in the habit of using both front and back brakes, guess it was not a good idea with light rust on front disk and 15+ year old tires. Bike slammed to the ground hard on the right side with rear brake punching a hole in side case of the engine soaking the drive with oil. Then I notice the red fluid that was not coming from the bike but me! Some skinned knee's and such and also a gap where my right upper front tooth used to be, well at least the upper half was still there!

Guess one moral of the story is don't touch brakes too hard when riding on cold blacktop with rock hard 15+ year old tires! Good things were had spare side case for engine on the shelf and a very good dentist that could fabricate a new section of tooth to replace the missing part, and she didn't laugh too much. And yes bike had new sticky tires before the next ride!

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heymccall said:

Fitted a Birdseye Wagway tree shredder disc to a PC220-5, and made it work with two V60? Flow divider valves on the pump outputs, to achieve the 35-60gpm required to run.

Boss insisted on the flow being on the high side, so 60gpm it is (I did a switch for 1pump, 2 pump anyways). Placed a 1" opening screen guard on the cab, and tested it for operation.

Job foreman comes down to operate it. First pass, he sends a football sized chunk of tree past me @ over 60yards away. I'm done. It works.

Several weeks pass and the assigned operator, having finished felling trees, decides to shred a brush pile the dozer created. Not heeding the instructions of never see the teeth while in operation, he dips the disc down and finds a wrought iron fence within. Two pieces launch toward the cab, with one striking the cab side boom cylinder barrel, leaving a 3/8" deep gouge on its way to ricocheting through the cab side window and out the entry door. The second piece fit perfectly through the 1" mesh guard, the tempered front window, grazed the hair off the operator's head, and left a 1/2" hole in the rear cab sheetmetal top radius. Somewhere out there is a PC220-5 with a work lamp mounted on top rear of the cab.

Bought a $1300 piece of 4'x5'x1-1/4" bullet resistant lean and fitted it to front of the cab, yet, no one would elect to continue operating it.

Sold the attachment at auction. The contractor who bought it never did pay us for the lexan, which was not part of the auction.

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I think a standard mulcher like an FAE or Merry Chrusher would be a lot safer, the same way a flail mower is safer than a rotary.

Don't know why 2 posts show up.

@heymccall that thing is nuts! To toss the top of a tree like that is crazy!

On teeth: I was probably 10 or 11 years old when I was riding my bike and a dog ran out in front of me. I jammed on the brakes and went over the handlebars after semi-gently hitting the dog. Broken front tooth and off to emergency dentist. He finished up and said "you'll have to get that changed out in a few years but you're good to go." Well, here we are 30 something years later with that same fill-in job. Last time I went to the dentist, which was quite a while ago, they weren't worried about it. And it looks fine, if you didn't know it you wouldn't know it.

I have 35+ years of experience with terrifying things that have happened to me in this business. I could fill 3 pages here just by myself! I'm trying to decide whether to start back when I was 19?...or concentrate on the worst ones?

AHH......screw it! I had what I thought was an idiot boss when I worked for a Linkbelt /Bobcat/ Gomaco dealer back in the early 80"s . We had a Lull 844 in the shop way longer than it needed to be, but once it was finally done, the customer was impatient about getting it back in production. They send their haul truck and low boy to pick the machine up right in the middle of a sever thunderstorm, raining so hard you couldnt even see. Come to find out, WE have to put the machine on the trailer, not the driver of the truck. My boss elects ME to do this and I refuse because of the downpour that was currently going on. I told him it was dangerous to load it but he didnt care.......so off I go. I line up the machine at the back of the low boy ramps and start to go up. I can barely even see where I am at on the trailer, lightning flashing, loud cracks of thunder, and wind driven rain.......all this in a open ROPS. I get the front tires of the lift over the low boy tires, no problem. I start to creep up with the rear axles and as soon as they got on top of the trailer tires, the entire machine slips to the right enough that it goes over the side...................it balances there for about 5 seconds while I'm ready to bail off of it. Of course, it goes ahead and rolls over on its side. I bail as it goes over but still have enough sense to shut the engine off with the key as its going over. Luckily, with it going over to the right, the cab side was up. The other way would have probably crushed me. It only did minor damage that the company had to fix, but it never should have happened in the first place.

Did the same thing at the Terex dealer. I was elected to load a 82-20 dozer on a lowboy that was covered in ice.....and I mean THICK ice. I got it over the tires but once it was on the flat of the deck, it proceeded to slide to the right until it went off the side. It didnt roll over, but it tore the $%^& out of that trailer deck.

Over 50 years ago I was working on a Lorain truck crane. It had ball-bearings in the turntable and that made it completely silent when it would swing.
It also had about 6 inches of clearance between the top of the outrigger box and the underside of the counterweight when it would swing.
On one fateful day the operator was in the seat and the motor motor was idling. He had been waiting about twenty minutes to make a pick for the iron-workers. He forgot that I was working next to the outrigger box when he started to swing for a pick. He never touched the throttle and started to swing. My back was towards the counterweight and I had no idea it was coming towards me. My head and neck was above the outrigger assembly.
Instinctively I felt something was happening and I jerked my head back and out of the way of the counterweight.
It was about 6 inches from decapitating me when I got away from it.
No one saw it happen.
I never told the operator because I was sure it would have probably been a life altering event for him.
He was a super nice man and I knew him well.
Even today I can still visualize that day.

PS--- That particular model crane had a bad reputation for crushing and killing people that were caught between the truck cab and the crane counterweight when it was swinging.

brings back memories of my first crane job and a Lorain.
This happened on the Seattle waterfront a couple of years ago.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...ng-26-dies-shed-built-a-new-life-for-herself/

The article said "struck in the head" but she was in that same spot you were in on a big floating crane, trapped between a railing and the understructure Nobody was looking out for her.

My grandfather on my mother's side was crushed by walking on the bank side of a shovel. He was crushed by the counterweight when the operator turned the house unexpectedly. There were nine kids in her family and he had only worked for the county a few days before it happened. That was in the thirties. My dad told us the story when we started riding along with him to work. I don't know how many times I've been with sales reps who just took off to talk to the shovel operator without catching their attention.

I was on a job with a big conventional crawler crane the oiler got caught with a counter weight and was swept over the tracks I wanna say he was about 20 and 2nd week on the job he only got a busted wrist he was skinning enough it dumped him over the track

AzIron; I hit the like button because of the outcome of that near death accident. Not because I liked what happened.
Skyking1; How sad for her and her coworkers after turning her life around.
I can visualize how it happened. I feel badly for the crane operator.

Yikes @Tinkerer ! That kind of thing is real scary!

I'm like Vetech63, I've used my nine lives. Mostly because of other people and there stupidity.

Working automotive machine years ago the boss would let other people from shops use our press.
I was operating the seat guide machine when a mechanic from another shop was using the press.
A few seconds later a 1/2" ball bearing zipped by my head went through a 3/4 plywood divider wall
and another wall and imbedded in a third wall in the book keepers office-and she was in her office.
All because he didn't use a scatter shield-no more outsiders using the press.

I think the only protacal should be crane shut off when doing anything on it. I worked at a golf course where a 2nd assistant ( don't know why you need more than 1) was climbing on an 88 inch tree spade trying to hold branches of a spruce tree out of the spade. Spade operator should have told him to stay away but proceeded to put tree in hole. Crushed assistants steel toed boot in one of the spade slides. Boot had to be cut off and he lost 3 toes! What an idiot but the operator of the spade shares a lot of the responsibility. I think.workers comp. covered it but how stupid can you be. An 88 inch spade has some pretty powerful hydraulics.

Truck Shop said:

I'm like Vetech63, I've used my nine lives. Mostly because of other people and there stupidity.

Working automotive machine years ago the boss would let other people from shops use our press.
I was operating the seat guide machine when a mechanic from another shop was using the press.
A few seconds later a 1/2" ball bearing zipped by my head went through a 3/4 plywood divider wall
and another wall and imbedded in a third wall in the book keepers office-and she was in her office.
All because he didn't use a scatter shield-no more outsiders using the press.

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I dare say MOST of us old farts on here have used up all the extra granted spares we were allotted at birth, KNOW I have.

John C. said:

My grandfather on my mother's side was crushed by walking on the bank side of a shovel. He was crushed by the counterweight when the operator turned the house unexpectedly. There were nine kids in her family and he had only worked for the county a few days before it happened. That was in the thirties. My dad told us the story when we started riding along with him to work. I don't know how many times I've been with sales reps who just took off to talk to the shovel operator without catching their attention.

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It's no different than idiots in cars when you're clearing snow or they see a skid steer on the street. They have no clue to wait for the operator to acknowledge them and figure they'll just sneak behind them. Utter stupidity in my opinion. A car will always lose against machinery.

John C. said:

My grandfather on my mother's side was crushed by walking on the bank side of a shovel. He was crushed by the counterweight when the operator turned the house unexpectedly. There were nine kids in her family and he had only worked for the county a few days before it happened. That was in the thirties. My dad told us the story when we started riding along with him to work. I don't know how many times I've been with sales reps who just took off to talk to the shovel operator without catching their attention.

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That is why I tell everybody and I mean everybody that gets around me on an excavator that a little piece of rock or whatever is your best friend. You toss it out there by my bucket and I will just stop moving take my hands off the sticks and look for you. I've had to work many times in tight quarters where when I swing there's 4 " between me and a fence or a house or a building and the counterweight. Plenty of room but no extra room for a human. That one little thing gives me lots of Peace of mind. I do get smart asses who will throw a 3 lb potato inside my bucket as hard as they can bam! I don't care we all go home safe.

I was outside of Packwood somewhere and met the owner of the excavator whom I followed into the wood to a clearing job. It was about a 120 size machine and the operator was facing away from us and could not hear us yelling. The owner picked up a stick and half heartedly threw it to catch the operators attention. We both saw the direction and trajectory just before it slammed into the back cab window and shattered it into thousands of pieces. Scared the crap out of the operator and he ducked down in the cab thinking that someone had taken a shot at him with a gun. He was checking for blood when we got to the door and was pretty pale looking still wondering what had happened. The owner was beside himself apologizing multiple times. I did the political thing and showed plenty of concern for the operator and the owner. Both the owner and the operator left the machine while I did the inspection. Good thing. I couldn't stop laughing about it till I got half way home.

I didn't put what happened in the report but did mention that the owner planned on replacing the window before any trade in went down.

example of where not to walk through


Not sneaking through here either.


The worst "squirrel" nutcase I had to work around lately thought nothing. He thought nothing of just stepping up to the machine from my blind spots without warning me.
It was the fiber job above, and i was stripping some heavy sod off with a cleanup bucket, so i would have clean fill for the backfill.
I was moving fast, stripping about 3 bucket widths and moving right along. He just stepped up from behind and took my tape measure by my toe glass without warning. WTF?

Eye contact with the operator before you come into his working radius, theres no other way to approach a machine. Or a car in cross walk if your on foot.

It is pretty amazing how foolish people can be, the closest call i've had is I bumped a contractor I was working for with my CTL. Backfilling and they decided I was done in that area so starting putting the fence back up maybe 10' behind me only seconds after leaving, nope not done. Lucky I was stopping anyway just as I bumped him.