627F scraper and 16G grader collision

[BrianHay]

It was winter time and we were just getting stated on a project. We had adt's and scrapers running together on the same haul road both ways hauling topsoil to a stock pile. I was in the grader rolling the snow over to make the road wider for us. It was already wide enough to pass eachother but at a safe speed not in top gear. The road was frozen and very slippery. The guys in the scrapers were giving the girls in the trucks a hard time because when the scrapers were coming they bailed right off the road because they were scared. The guys in the scrapers would not slow down. I was sticking up for the girls (we all had radios) and doing the same with the grader. It was quickly turning into a heated debate. The scraper operators were annoyed thinking we were wasting time getting out of the way and we were getting mad because they wouldn't slow down passing us. Then one round I looked in my mirror and seen the scrapers pulling out of the cut. I thought I had enough time to make it to were the road was already wide enough for me to move over without having to pull out off my cut. I didn't make it. When the second scraper was passing my blade hooked something hard in the snow and it shifted my back end over and my ripper hooked his bowl. He was in top gear fully loaded and it tossed me like I was just toy. Amazingly noone got seriously hurt. I wasn't wearing my seat belt so I got tossed around in the cab really hard. But just ened up with some bad bruises and was really sore for a few weeks.

There were several lessons learned that day but the most obvious ones were.

Give eachother some room. Noones life is worth a few extra loads on the counter at the end of the day.

Wear your seatbelt. Even on flat ground chit happens. Its not only there to save you if you roll over.

Never second guess anything when it comes to saftey. I should have picked up my balde and got out of the way even if I only had 5 feet left to go.

At the very least I should have stopped while he passed.

There are more lessons in this story so fire away guys. I don't have pics of it, not much to see anyways but I will find some pics of the job that show the conditions it happened in.

I have more stories were I was more at fault but I thought this was a good one most of us can relate to. Maybe I will post more stories later.

 

[BrianHay]

Here is a couple shots of the jobs. I will get some more up soon.

 

[BrianHay]

My best pics won't upload :bash tells me they are not valid images :beatsme

 

[BrianHay]

Got the problem with the pictures figured out Were the scraper is traveling in the backround is the stretch it happened on.

 

[Lashlander]

Nice pics! :thumbsup Is that northern Alberta? I've been though there a few times on my way up the Alcan.

 

[BrianHay]

Thanks I have more and will post them soon

Yes it is that's just North of Edmonton.

 

[BrianHay]

Here is a few more

 

[Lashlander]

Just curious what your up to in your pics. It looks like the ground would be frozen. Hard to make roads or pads with clumps of frozen dirt. :Banghead

 

[BrianHay]

For sure its hard to build with frozer dirt but we did. We were building an industrial subdivision and paded through a couple of good sized ponds. We told the customer that what we were doing was very wrong but their 'expert' that they sent out to oversee the job insisted it had to be done asap so they could start building. We padded over one pond with huge chunks of frost and wet ugly sand/silt. We wanted to pad it over but keep far enough below grade so we could give it a good cap in the spring with good dirt when we opened up the rest of the job. But they insisted we finish it with what we had open so they could start building right away. :badidea After we finished and most everyone went back home there was just a couple of us left doing the trimming. The guy all of a sudded wanted us to pull out the soft spots and fix them. Well as you can imagine the whole thing was soft and the parts that weren't were just frozen. But we took a 27 and pulled out some of the worst spots and filled them back in out of the same cut like he asked to make him happy. I havnt seen how it looks this summer after they built on it and it thawed out. But I can't imagine it would be any good. :beatsme

 

[MKTEF]

I agree with both of u.:notworthy

But i know from experience that it is possible to do construction in the winter.
The thing is to remove all snow and ice from the "underground" and fill with blasted rock/materials that got no water/ice in it.

If you know that the snow came before the big frost, u then know how deep the frost has gone down the earth. In some cases u don't have any.(The deapth also depends on the type of ground. If there is no water in the ground you get no frost, and no expansion because of it.)

Then u remove the snow(insulation) as the (rock)filling goes forward.(And don,t move more than a days work!)
This way u can have a filling that dosen't move when the summer comes.

If you fill on frozen ground, you will get movement in the summer, and sometimes it will take longer time for this filling to be unfrozen, because of the new insulating filling on top.

Nowadays we work all year around with nearly no break in the winter.
Earlier, 10 years ago, it was normal to have a break in the winter.
(the operators had nothing to do)
And all the contractors here have come up with ways that works all year around.
And they have to because of the pressed prices.

 

[BrianHay]

I didn't disagree with working in the winter. for sure it can be done. I have worked several winters as well moving dirt. Used some of the same methods as you described. Haven't used rock like that yet though. Got some pics? But the way we did it on this job was wrong. You can kinda tell by the pictures how cold it was. The only material we had was really wet sand and silt. There was water coming up in our cut. We only bladed the snow of a little at a time but it was close to -40 for a while so we still had a minimum of a foot of frost and up to 3 in places. For some of the job we ran 2 scrapers on nite shift though so that helped a lot.

 

[BrianHay]

You can see the water the cut in this one.....and me high blading in the background

 

[thejdman04]

great story

 

[BrianHay]

Another pic :thumbsup

 

[surfer-joe]

Just think, these pictures were taken in the middle of summer.........

 

[Jeff D.]

Just think, these pictures were taken in the middle of summer.........

Joe, the dates on the pics say December.

 

[surfer-joe]

Oops!!

Well, I'm sure summer is nice in your neck of the woods, all week of it.

 

[BrianHay]

:lol: yup nice to be able to park the dog sleds for a little while

 

[surfer-joe]

Brian, do you know where Morse, Saskatchewan is? I've family there.

 

[BrianHay]

Just checked it out on the map. I've worked in that area before building road and Twinned parts of the Trans Canada hiway a little ways west of there. Do you visit them once in a while?