I could fill ten pages of this BB with embarrassing things I've done .. embarrassing things other work associates have done .. and embarrassing things I've seen, or had to fix ..
However, seeing as this is a confessional thread .. I guess I'll have to stick with my personally embarrassing moments.
One of the most memorable, would have to be .. dropping a fully-equipped, 25 tonne (55,000lb) D7F Cat dozer off the lowbed .. at 70 kmh (about 45 mph) .. about 30 years ago ..
Now, the advantages in this confession, are .. it was on a dirt back road .. no-one saw anything .. the damage was minimal .. and I couldn't be fired for this piece of stupidity .. because it was MY machine, and MY truck and lowbed ..
It all started, when as an agricultural earthmoving contractor, in the wheatbelt of West Oz .. with three dozers .. I would engage in a large number of dam (pond) enlargements every Summer, as a large % of my annual work.
I'd often work the tractors together, or close together, on adjoining farms .. so I could keep costs down, and keep better control of what was going on.
Enlargements are always lousy jobs. You generally have 3-4 feet of mud to work around, that you had to avoid getting bogged in, as you widened the dam on either three or four sides.
Sometimes, the inevitable happened, and the mud got too deep .. you accidentally slipped into it .. or you misread the depth ..
On this day, I was working away, on one D7F .. about 3/4 of the way towards completion of one dam enlargement .. and I got a visit from one of my operators, saying he'd bogged the other D7F, on an enlargement he'd been doing, about 6-8 km (4-5 miles) away.
Annoyed that I'd have to stop work on this enlargement, and take my tractor over to the operators job, to haul him out .. I threw the D7F on the back of the Mack and tandem lowbed, and roared off .. taking a little-used back road, and one I hadn't driven on a lot, to get to the other machine.
The trailer was a dropdeck style, about a 1M (3') deck height with 10.00 x 20 wheels .. a full-height deck over the tandem assembly .. and a beavertail with ramps, to load up. The truck was an early 70's, F-700 Cabover Mack.
Now, in those days, we NEVER chained the tractors on. It just wasn't worth the effort, we reckoned .. because the roads we travelled were mostly back country roads, with little traffic .. and the time taken to chain tractors on, was regarded as a nuisance .. and we always reckoned, if a tractor was going to fall off, it would bust any chains, anyway .. or take the truck and trailer with it.
Anyway, I set off .. at speed .. because there was rain forecast within 12 hours, and time was the essence of everything we were doing .. and I wanted to get back and finish my enlargement, ASAP ..
On this little-used, dirt back road, there was .. unbeknowns to me .. one of those wondrous pieces of local Shire Council (county) works of unprofessional road art .. called a variable-radius curve ..
These variable-radius curves are caused by someone not surveying a curve properly .. but by 'roughing' the curve in, with a grader, by eye .. with the result, that if you travel one direction around the curve .. it starts off tight .. then gets easier .. but travelling the other direction .. it starts off, a wide easy curve .. then suddenly gets tighter and tighter ..
I guess you're starting to see the next stage of the story here?? .. Yep .. I came into this R/H curve, with the Mack and lowbed, at about 90 kmh (55 mph) .. from the easy end .. then all of a sudden .. HOLY MOLY! .. this bend is getting tighter and tighter!! ..
I backed off the loud pedal, but I was just a little too late. I couldn't wash off enough speed .. all I could do, was steer into the curve .. and hope like hell, the D7F stayed on.
I dropped back to 70 kmh, and hanging onto the wheel like grim death, I thought I'd made it .. but I forgot one thing. Those track shoes on the D7F were coated in nice greasy clayey mud .. and she took off .. right over the L/H/S of the trailer, blade first (we always loaded up, blade forward) ..
Now comes the amazing part. I watched in horror, in the L/H mirror, as the L/H corner of the blade gouged into the dirt road .. and the D7F stood up .. almost vertical .. rotated 180° .. and bounced, BACK UP INTO THE AIR! .. above the trailer .. while the truck and trailer shot out from underneath .. !!
However, the D7F wasn't to be airborne for too long .. no sirreee .. she came back down again .. facing the opposite direction (backwards) .. and landed on the beavertail of the trailer, with 2 of the 3 ripper shanks, ripping straight through the 5/16" plate on the beaver tail .. and bringing me to a VERY rapid halt!! ..
Climbing out of the truck, somewhat shook up .. I carefully inspected the damage .. and was amazed to find that the D7F was undamaged .. and the only casualty, was the ripper holes in the beavertail of the lowbed!!
I started the tractor up, backed it up the beavertail, and extracted the ripper shanks .. drove it forward off the trailer .. levelled off, the almighty great gouge in the road ..
.. loaded up again .. and took off for my original destination ..
Despite a careful inspection, I could not find one single piece of damage to the dozer .. possibly due to the dirt road gouge slowing a lot of the impact .. and the holes in the beaver tail were repaired within the next month, to avoid answering any embarrassing questions ..
I can honestly say, this is the only time I have known a large dozer to fall off a trailer .. do a full 180° flip in mid-air .. and land facing back the other way, with minimal damage.
It's not something I'd ever wish to repeat .. and if an operator had done it, he'd probably have been fired, unless he was a particularly good operator ..
I must admit, the crux of the accident resulted from excessive speed, for the conditions .. however, the bottom line is .. that some proper road engineering, with a constant radius curve .. would have not added to the problem .. and most likely would not have resulted, in the tractor falling off.
As always, I was young and over-enthusiastic, and the years have seen caution come to the fore. One thing I am particularly wary of nowadays, is travelling with great care, on roads I'm not fully familiar with ..