Close Calls

[Birken Vogt]

Reminds me of a time I asked to take a company boom truck home to do a little work. I was to drive it back the next morning. It was an old clunker, I did not want to take the good one. Well I got there and did the work. Parked it for the night. Got up the next morning to go to work and it would not start. It had an auto crane with that crazy complicated battery system. I poked and prodded but I could not figure out what was wrong with it. I was needed in person at work more than the old clunker so somehow I got another ride and they sent a tow truck after the clunker. The boss never said anything about it but I am sure he was not happy.

Moral of the story, never take a work vehicle home, it will always break at the worst possible moment and make you look like a jerk.

I know I have posted this other places on this forum but this seems like a good place to store it!

I was in the process of building a new two car garage with a shop bay on one end. Had all the walls up and maybe a third of the trusses. Wife and I had lifted those up by hand on to the 10 foot walls.

I got the idea that we could save a bit of work if I asked the boss to let me take the little Koehring Bantam hydraulic truck crane home for the weekend. See my house was just a mile down the road from the quarry so boss said sure just don't get a ticket as crane was not licenced.

Friday at the end of the day I jumped in the Koehring and took off down the road. Pulled in the drive and backed up about half way between where truss company had dropped the trusses and the end wall of the garage.

Just for the heck of it I decided to double check to see if I was in a good spot to reach trusses and the garage. Boomed up the crane and swung hook over the stake or trusses. Look about perfect! Then swung boom over to the garage, I was a bit away from the center of garage so boomed out a bit to be sure I could reach the far end wall.

Well anyone who has been listening recalls there was no mention of out riggers being put down so the result is obvious! Boom slowly comes down chopping the half dozen already installed trusses along with the west end wall right in to and putting a small dent in the slab floor.

A quick look and I decided that there was no more damage to be done to the garage structure, so I boomed down to get the truck crane close to level then put out the outriggers so I could then lift the crane boom off the garage. A few 2X4's did no damage to the Koehring!

Put boom back in the cradle and drove the crane back to the shop! Figured I had a few days work before I'd be putting up trusses again. Did manage to salvage the majority of the parts of the damaged trusses by using one of the new ones as a pattern to lay them on and using scrap pieces of plywood to replace the steel plates they had been made with at the factory.

One thing that made this whole fiasco even worse was that Friday night we were going out to dinner with two other couples. One couple the guy was one of the best known crane operators in this part of the state and years latter he was the guy who trained my future boss on operating cranes.

Oh! and yes we put the trusses up by hand once we had the damaged ones fixed!

Many years ago I was doing some bush-clearing using an old powerhift D8H with no cab or ROPS, just a sunshade. I wasn't paying too much attention, just following the instructions of the surveyor who back then was equipped with nothing more complex than a magnetic compass and a ranging staff. Uniform was usual African-style, shorts, short/no-sleeved shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap.

Well I knocked over a fairly large tree that just happened to have a nest of African killer bees in it. They very quickly made me well aware that they didn't take kindly to my home-wrecking antics by stinging the bejasus out of me. Apparently according to those who witnessed it, when I bailed out over the back of the diesel tank of the tractor it seemed as though my legs were going at 100mph while they were still 6 feet off the ground. I had the presence of mind to slap the transmission control into neutral and hit the governor lever all in a split second before I exited stage left so the tractor just stopped and sat there idling, fortunately the ground was pretty flat. Luckily for me the tractor only had a towbar on it and not a ripper so I didn't end up impaled on one of the shanks.......!!

 

[DMiller]

Worst experience ever had, SMALL machine, old fixed position Hotsy pressure washer in the shop I worked at Tulsa. Damned pilot ALWAYS going out but had a automatic relight system, situated WAY too close to the roll up door but handy as well, also had a problematic damper system on it for the exhaust thru the shop roof.

Went to do some serious cleaning on a DOWELL SVCS Rig, No heat also NO oily crap moving so go and check, hood cold, look under the machine and FOOM!! The auto igniter for the pilot lit it off and ALL the gas hanging in the flue as the electric damper was STILL CLOSED as No Fire lit off. SOAB! Did NOT need a haircut for close to six weeks, DID NOT have eyebrows or a mustache and one hell of a sunburn, at least Had Been wearing my favorite hat, hair atop my head and It too survived but singed. Freaking machine got four others when the manager had enough and had it replaced.

 

[mowingman]

That "Shake Hands" movie was always shown back in the day at our annual safety dinners. Some of the scenes were not something you wanted to watch after eating a big steak dinner! Lucky no one ever lost their supper!

I always showed it right after lunch. It helped wake the guys up after a big lunch, that's for sure.

 

[Shimmy1]

Thank you mowingman for bringing it up, and Dave for posting a link. Growing up, I heard my dad talk about seeing that video several times, but I wasn't old enough at the time to go with him to the saftey meetings. I had always wished I could see it, and here we are. Boy would it be nice if a guy could go back in time and run those machines when they were that shiny.

 

[Queenslander]

The trouble with bailing out during a bee attack is that someone has to get back on the machine to shift the darn thing.
If you have time, you can wait till they settle down a bit and quickly sneak aboard.
Sometimes while pulling, we’ve resorted to stretching the chain out and towing the machine backwards, sans operator, with the other tractor.

 

[Nige]

The trouble with bailing out during a bee attack is that someone has to get back on the machine to shift the darn thing.
If you have time, you can wait till they settle down a bit and quickly sneak aboard.
Sometimes while pulling, we’ve resorted to stretching the chain out and towing the machine backwards, sans operator, with the other tractor.

What we did was pile up a heap of brush in an already-cleared area maybe 50 yards upwind of the tractor and then set fire to it. The smoke drifted down over the tractor, the bees took the huff and left, at least they left far enough for someone to get on it and move it away from the fallen tree.

 

[Mother Deuce]

Interesting accounts! When I was about 11, on a solo sod rolling mission about a block from home, I was happily win-rowing sod to the left with a John Deere 2010. I had been taught by Dad to get off and get back from the machine, kneel down and take a look at what you were doing. I decided to make the obligatory check right after I had rolled up a in-ground yellow jacket nest. I hopped off the machine right in to the middle of a very unhappy bunch of campers! All decorum was lost as I took off sprinting shedding my pants as I was running. It was a non stop sprint to house!
Probably the worst dozer adventure was with a D10 N in AZ. I was pushing off the outside edge on like the 4100 level and found a huge rock that survived the blasters anfo massage. I am pushing and digging and working different angles around it. When it finally started to give. I leaned on it hard... as it rolled out a piece of it rolled out of the ground and hooked the edge or the back of the blade. As the three of us the rock, the Cat and I were making our way to the bitter edge one of us was a blur of activity trying to get off the rock and back the freak up! The rock came clear and headed for the basement at a high rate of speed. It left me stopped on the edge, as I got my s*&% together I looked out over top of the right front track and noticed 2000 feet of daylight which was very interesting to me. Never has reverse been selected so gently and decelerator released so carefully. I can still recall the noise of the trans pumps as reverse was selected and wondering why in the hell we weren't backing up yet!

 

[Nige]

Any time someone mentions Rock + D10 in the same sentence it always reminds me of this ........

 

[Mother Deuce]

Any time someone mentions Rock + D10 in the same sentence it always reminds me of this ........

View attachment 189142

You were there! I failed to notice you and your camera! LOL

 

[kshansen]

And here is what happens when you are working two shifts and one of the night shift drivers forgets to push the lever to the left of the seat all the way forward.

Cat came out of it a bit better than the conveyor but did some damage to hoses! Those were the big cooler hoses to the rear brake so lost a bit of oil right fast!


Just remembered another detail that would qualify this as a close call. Look in the next picture where the arrow points to the power pole for the three phase power to the primary crusher! It was touching !

 

[DMiller]

OOOPS!!

Quarries were always congested awkward places to be in with the old end dumps.

 

[kshansen]

OOOPS!!

Quarries were always congested awkward places to be in with the old end dumps.

True, even after working there for 45 years I always felt a bit uncomfortable after dark.

Things change so much when you loose all the peripheral vision in the dark!

That long conveyor that goes off to the right in the picture was one of the first projects I helped assemble back in summer of 1968, actually helped dig the holes for the supports with a jack hammer after driller bored a bunch of holes in the bedrock! Out of the picture to the right is the surge pile with a 10 foot corrugated steel "tunnel" under it that was another of the projects I worked on that summer.

 

[DMiller]

Spring and fall were always sticky white lime mess then came the dry of summer so dusty the lime would bury the paint on machines, and good old frozen winter, no starts, hard starts, air systems froze up, hydraulics watered and frozen and the conveyors all iced up. Seems whenever it snowed much I was sent home or called at home and told NOT to come in for a few days, let the mess erupt and would clean it all up in better weather. I was only part time and bounced quarry to quarry as a semi-contractor mechanic.

Still remember when the quarries around me sold out, where I had a few projects in varied states, the same company took them all over in a matter of months then the NEW Manager foreskin came to me told me I was no longer needed and could just pack up and leave when I was ready. Dropped the parts in hand to the dirt and loaded my stuff, had a old Euc 6/110 DD partly assembled, as stated dropped the parts I had in hand to the DIRT floor and walked out where that old Euc was never finished ended up sold for scrap. The 'Old Guys' that worked the pit trucks would only have brakes once in awhile, most of the old haul trucks had DEEP scars on their sides from dragging along the haul road/ramp cut wall to keep from losing speed control with NO brakes, once in awhile one would get away, could hear the screeching then the CRUNCH and finally SPLASH as they found the wet spot at the pit bottom past the big shot rocks.

 

[kshansen]

Off topic a bit but where we are located it stays cold and snowy enough from about the middle of November till about the middle of April to make trying to produce stone pretty much unprofitable. So production more or less stops for those months most of the time.

I won't say we never ran anything that was a bit borderline on safety but at least management was not too bad to deal with in those regards. Had one boss in the shop that was a first class tightwad, but one thing he never gave me any grief about was the seats in any machine that came through the shop. He said if a man has to sit in that machine for 8 to 10 hours or more he needs a good seat. Guess it helps as he had a bit of a bad back himself!

 

[DMiller]

Old crusher shed structure looks as could use a little TLC prior to the incident.

 

[kshansen]

Old crusher shed structure looks as could use a little TLC prior to the incident.

Yea the corrugated tin had seen better days, build up of spillage causing it to rust pretty bad!

Accident happened in 2009 and that screen/crusher tower was erected in 1967 so no surprising there was a bit of rusting going on! I believe that big flap to the left of the head pulley was ripped open from the accident.

 

[Batkom]

Could only watch about 2/3 of that. Stomach not the issue, I don’t mind the blood, I just can’t stand watching one train wreck after another with the apprehension of how bad is this one going to be as you see it coming!
When I was about 12 was visiting my cousins, my uncle was doing custom yard prep for new homes.
He had an old tractor and a disk he would tow around to break up the ground a bit.
Well the bricks n rocks he had piled on it were not enough weight, so my two cousins said, hop on the disk, so all three of us are riding the disk behind the tractor, he hit a big rock on my side flipped me off, n under the disk I went, they yelled loud enough he got it stopped at my shoulders! And luckily both my cousins were a couple years older n bigger and had enough adrenaline and strength to take some of the weight off till my uncle could give them a hand!
I thought it was stupid at the start, my Dad had raised me to look out for stupid stuff!BUT cousins goad you into stupid stuff!!

 

[Nige]

I think you're maybe missing the point.......

All those reconstructions in the movie were of actual events that happened at some time in the dim & distant past. First time I saw SHWD was probably late 70's so it was a while ago now. However the message then and the message now differ very little, at least IMHO.

If nothing else the whole message of the movie is that what God gave you between the ears is the best PPE you'll ever be issued with. Everyone's got the same and if someone chooses not to use it, well here's a few examples of the consequences and how easily they can turn round and bite your a$$.

There couldn't be a better cue for "Here's Your Sign"....

 

[Batkom]

I got the point, and after that incident 42 years ago, I don’t let any one talk me into anything, or start any job without a thorough evaluation of what might go wrong and get me.
I have only had stitches once in my working career, and it was so minor that if I had been at home I would have taped it up n called it good.

 

[kshansen]

Just recalled another one and picture below is out of the same group the truck hitting the conveyor came from.

If you look at that tower that is holding up the conveyor pointing straight away from you you see the big "X" braces. As I recall they are about 2 1/2 to 3 inch angle iron. We were in the process of assembling that tower with it laying flat on it side.

A couple guys, one was the boss's son Gary, were up on the side of the tower laying on the ground and they were installing one of those big X braces. They were bolted together where they crossed in the center. Gary, the boss's son was trying to line up the holes to install the bolts holing the angle to the legs. As I recall it he had dropped a wrench or line-up punch and asked me to get it a toss it up to him. Just as I step inside the legs of the tower he decides to give the X brace a smack with a hammer. As he does that the X shifts just off the edge of the tab it was to be bolted to and proceeds to rotate down right at me. I actually was not aware of what was happening but did feel something smack me on the top of hard hat and bounce off just to the right of my shoulder.

My first thought was someone had dropped a bolt or something. Gary on the other hand from what I recall people telling me thought for a minute I was going to be dead!

As it was the fact that the X was fairly close to being balanced with the leg that hit me only being a few inches longer than the opposite end there was not much force to deal with and only a very minor scratch in the old fiberglass hard hat! Had both legs of the X on that side fell ove the ending might have been different and you would not be reading about it here!