Just some work pics

[crane operator]

Did you guys not agree on a rate or price beforehand? Did you charge them during lunch break?

We're all by the hour, I'm not running the saw, so I'm not estimating how long its going to take them to cut trees. I knew we were in trouble first thing in the morning when it went from 4 to 7 trees and the big one by the road, that he was going to have out of there, wasn't gone.

I went and looked at the job, told them a estimated travel time, my hourly rate, and counterweight delivery and permits. I told them to send me a email address, and I'd send them a formal quote, and they never sent a email address.

I'll take a 30 min lunch if the customer wants, that I don't charge for. BUT I'm not taking a 1 1/2 hour lunch, especially when that pushes me into OT that night, and I wouldn't have been able to get the crane home either, so that costs me another 4 hours of riding around to go back the next day and get it.

1 1/2 hour lunch when you're less than 1/2 done isn't a good plan.

 

[Welder Dave]

Taking a 1/2 hour lunch break makes sense if the crane is sitting idle and you've got a bunch more work on the same job. If you have 1/2 an hour to an hour more work but they want to take their lunch break instead of finishing with you first, should charge double time. If the crane is holding something up while they are taking a lunch break and you have to stay in it should be on the clock. Cranes aren't cheap and if the customer wasn't prepared like they were supposed to be isn't your fault. "A lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part" is pretty much along the same lines. You want the crane on the job and you're fiddling and farting around don't expect a discount for your stupidity.

 

[Natman]

I had one of those just yesterday: a custom home, and at 11:50 AM, with just the 3 car garage left to set trusses on, the carpenters dropped their nail belts and took off for an hour lunch. When they got back we wrapped things up in a bit over an hour. I'm knocking half an hour off my bill for my lunch. I seem to remember, during my construction days, whether working for myself or as a union journeyman carpenter, lunch meant 30 minutes, but now the min seems to be an hour. And these pussies are using air nail guns, not swinging a 28 oz. waffle headed framing hammer, but I digress. I had another job to get to, and they knew it, but as I still had plenty of time left I didn't say anything as the bossman (the guy who writes the check out) is a friend of mine and he, like many others, is struggling to find good help.
Today, my second job got canceled because the contractors help couldn't get it together to show up by 1 in the afternoon. The job site is going to get rain over the weekend, and the site is a mud pit so that will set the job back by at least a week, in late October, in snow country.

 

[skyking1]

I agree and a half hour means 30 @##$%$% minutes!
Today I was sitting in my excavator waiting for the crew to saunter back after their 45 minute "break". I'm not going to dig grade and check it myself, that is why we are a crew.

 

[donkey doctor]

In these kinds of situations back in the days when I still worked we we would just take a 10 minute coffee break every couple of hours and book some overtime for no lunch break. Didn't hold anybody up and got the job done sooner. Everybody seemed happy with doing it that way. d.d.

 

[Birken Vogt]

Who wants to stay at the job site any longer than necessary anyway. After 10 minutes to eat my lunch and 20 minutes to relax and clear my head that is long enough. I would not want to do another 30 minutes looking at my shoes. I'd rather spend that time at home with the wife and kids. Or getting paperwork done so the next job can happen. Time is a nonrenewable resource.

 

[Welder Dave]

Long lunch breaks are fine if you own all the equipment you need on the job.

 

[John Griffin]

Just to be clear, we had only asked for a 30 minute lunch break. I was just wondering if thats what had the tree Co owner complaining to crane Op. An hour and a half is just wasting time. Sounds like a typical tree **** show. We didn't prep, showed up late, took a 1.5 hr lunch, gave the customer extras for free, and can't figure out why we didn't make any money. Most tree guys aren't good businessmen.

When you are climbing trees, you need a break at lunch time. Got to give your muscles a break and you need to put some food in. Got to let it settle for a bit if you want to keep it.

We sub to multiple other tree companies in town as we are the only one with our own crane. We always let them stop the clock for 30 minutes for lunch. Even if not climbing, its kinda hard to eat a sandwich while feeding the chipper, etc.

 

[Welder Dave]

It all depends on the arrangements you made with the crane and if the crane operator has to stay in the crane while you're having lunch. I don't know as I'm not a certified crane operator but wouldn't think you can leave the crane for very long, if at all with a suspended load on the hook.

 

[crane operator]

Got called to look at a job with issues. The potential customer hired a sign company to put scaffold racks on a building in town, to work up on a wall. Most of the scaffold racks are 2-3,000lbs. So the sign guy shows up with his bucket truck, throws a chain over the fiberglass boom by the safety lanyard, and proclaims "good to go!" Its not a bucket truck anymore, its now a crane.

I say my piece- "no way is the bucket designed for that and I wouldn't work around it", which goes over like a lead balloon, but I can sleep good at night. They can do what they want. But its a great way to snap a fiberglass boom.

 

[JLarson]

Lol I don't think I've ever seen a bucket rated for more then 1k, plus it had a real material boom for swinging large light heads. 3K seems like asking for a Darwin.

 

[petepilot]

Got called to look at a job with issues. The potential customer hired a sign company to put scaffold racks on a building in town, to work up on a wall. Most of the scaffold racks are 2-3,000lbs. So the sign guy shows up with his bucket truck, throws a chain over the fiberglass boom by the safety lanyard, and proclaims "good to go!" Its not a bucket truck anymore, its now a crane.

I say my piece- "no way is the bucket designed for that and I wouldn't work around it", which goes over like a lead balloon, but I can sleep good at night. They can do what they want. But its a great way to snap a fiberglass boom.



View attachment 247460

Don t think i'd even get close to that rig with 3 k hang in on it

 

[skyking1]

Good idea to run not walk away from that one, @crane operator !!

 

[crane operator]

A couple years ago, a moron that has a shop a couple miles from mine, bought a backhoe and put it on a gooseneck behind a single wheel one ton. I spotted it in his yard, and told one of my guys "he's going to dump that thing".

Probably a week or two later, he had rolled the trailer, dumping the backhoe off, on the highway on the other side of my shop, and its a miracle he didn't kill anyone.

Well, its been raining here, and yesterday my shop road curve got him. He had a tandem enclosed trailer behind the one ton dually he purchased- I'm assuming after the insurance paid on the last one.

We haven't had anyone quite that far into the trees.

 

[crane operator]

 

[crane operator]

Trusses

 

[crane operator]

Roofing job at a resort. This is one we actually helped with a year or so ago, turns out they had different lots of shingles on the building, and the resort wasn't happy with the stripe look on the roof. So the new comes off, and newer yet installed.

The battery dump box is the cats a$$ for dumping shingles in a dumpster.

I missed out on most of this one, one of my guys covered all of it, but had saturday plans, so I finished up for him. It was kind of wet for roofing.

 

[crane operator]

Some steel on a back deck for a house, and some more scaffolding moving.

 

[crane operator]

And I turned down a heavy moving job a week ago.

Wife plays piano, and does lessons at a local church a couple days a week. Since we are empty nesters now, I took her shopping.

We've had a upright that we bought right after we were married, and I took her to a couple piano stores and let her play a bunch. Went and looked at some in private homes also.

Her favorite was a Baldwin made in 1905, it had undergone a restoration maybe 10-15 years ago. Its big and heavy, and was 2 hours away from my house. A piano mover quoted me $650 to bring it to our house, and I know there wasn't anyway I could do it with my guys for less than that. He's got all the equipment and does it everyday, so I let them move it.

Wife has been enjoying it. Supposed to have a tuner/ repair guy come next week to fix a couple issues and tune it all up.

I think we need to turn it to a little angle in the room, but I'm not the real decider on how the furniture is placed in the rooms anyways, I'm just the dumb muscle.

 

[crane operator]

My mechanic in training has the 5.4 ford shop lawn ornament in disassembly mode. This is the reman engine we put in that skipped time and shattered the plastic intake.

He's got it down in a lot of pieces, and I don't think we've actually hurt anything serious, and I've found the culprit of the timing issues.

The cam phasers have a clock spring that pushes the timing back against the oil fed advance (I think that's how it works). Any how, after watching some youtube on what they are supposed to look like, I found that the left head phaser, had a bolt sheared that tensions the clock spring. So no timing adjust on that side.

I think I'm gong to get the little blocks that lock the phasers in place, and then it has a tune that goes on the ecm so it won't throw codes with the blocks in.