That hoe is "attached" pretty well to keep it from tipping and what you have to look close for is the cable attached to the dozer on the other side helping "pull" after the hoe is in place for fowared motion.
Geeze, I was getting worried for a minute that nobody would chime in. I'm going to have to jump with both feet on Heavy saying you don't need brains to run big iron. I have my office in a logging shop, I trade mechanic and woods monkey time for cheap rent and power-tool privileges. The partners are long-time buddies of mine. None went to cowledge like me, but they have ridiculous skills that a lot of smart people don't ever try, much less develop. I've had the chance to work the toys I can comprehend, that's the skidder and the Cats, but its going to be a big leap for me to run anything further up the food chain and not kill myself. Skill set 1: Three dimensions, over time. They have to know where they are, what's around them, where everything will be when the move is over, and whether that move sets them up properly for the NEXT move. It's hard enough on the flat, try it on the side of a hill. Big Stick and Loggah can relate. It is effing hard to input/output 28 tons or so of irritable iron. Just TRY running a clipper on a crunchy mountain. Or just process logs with the computer thingie. Don't smash into the log truck or the skidder or the yarder. See if you can feel that soft spot in the ground through your operator's seat BEFORE you flip over a quarter million dollars. My dad was a fighter pilot, ran Cats before the Air Force and logged for a time after retiring. His phrase, and he should know, is situational awareness. Flying demands the same kind of awareness, of "otherness" -- or bad stuff happens. Skill set 2: Mechanics. If you've ever opened the access doors on any hunk of green or yellow iron, you will see a greasy mess of hoses and wires, lube points, et cetera et cetera. The manuals on these things are three inches thick and in Chinese. Now, imagine you had a fire in the valve body and the machine is hundreds of yards up the mountain. In snow up to your waist. Go ahead, figure out how you're gonna isolate the plumbing so you can crawl the thing down to the road and then to the lowboy so you can get it to town. Go ahead. In a blizzard. Or let's do something easy -- find the leak in that there hose-bundle, and then swap the $*%$^# out for the right replacement! Or just try to drive the pins that hold everything together without killing somebody. I'll concede that grading and trenching and good crane flying (I used to rig red iron) is wonderful stuff, I've worked with the best. But to have that finesse in the woods, or on rough, uncertain ground -- that's darn near voodoo. Add to that the ability to run and maintain and FIX your toys, and I'd say pound for pound, modern loggers win.
Up hills slow, Down hills fast Tonnage first and Safety last.
I've not nearly the professional experience of those here. Most all my work was relegated to a CAT 980F in what could be considered a type of open mine.
Running loads of stone in this environment - which happens to be directly on the river with nothing to keep you from going in - keeps your head on a swivel.
I also used a wore out Pettibone and spent time loading MI logging trucks. For me that was the hardest. Loading level, even and QUICK when it's 5 am and -30 is important.
With gross weights over 160k - it has to be right. Notice how nice and neat this is loaded.
Pulling a M1 engine with an 88, like this. $750,000 engine that has very exact tolerances for going in and out of the tank. Kinda like pounding finish nails with a sledge hammer...
Geeze, I was getting worried for a minute that nobody would chime in. I'm going to have to jump with both feet on Heavy saying you don't need brains to run big iron. I have my office in a logging shop, I trade mechanic and woods monkey time for cheap rent and power-tool privileges. The partners are long-time buddies of mine. None went to cowledge like me, but they have ridiculous skills that a lot of smart people don't ever try, much less develop. I've had the chance to work the toys I can comprehend, that's the skidder and the Cats, but its going to be a big leap for me to run anything further up the food chain and not kill myself. Skill set 1: Three dimensions, over time. They have to know where they are, what's around them, where everything will be when the move is over, and whether that move sets them up properly for the NEXT move. It's hard enough on the flat, try it on the side of a hill. Big Stick and Loggah can relate. It is effing hard to input/output 28 tons or so of irritable iron. Just TRY running a clipper on a crunchy mountain. Or just process logs with the computer thingie. Don't smash into the log truck or the skidder or the yarder. See if you can feel that soft spot in the ground through your operator's seat BEFORE you flip over a quarter million dollars. My dad was a fighter pilot, ran Cats before the Air Force and logged for a time after retiring. His phrase, and he should know, is situational awareness. Flying demands the same kind of awareness, of "otherness" -- or bad stuff happens. Skill set 2: Mechanics. If you've ever opened the access doors on any hunk of green or yellow iron, you will see a greasy mess of hoses and wires, lube points, et cetera et cetera. The manuals on these things are three inches thick and in Chinese. Now, imagine you had a fire in the valve body and the machine is hundreds of yards up the mountain. In snow up to your waist. Go ahead, figure out how you're gonna isolate the plumbing so you can crawl the thing down to the road and then to the lowboy so you can get it to town. Go ahead. In a blizzard. Or let's do something easy -- find the leak in that there hose-bundle, and then swap the $*%$^# out for the right replacement! Or just try to drive the pins that hold everything together without killing somebody. I'll concede that grading and trenching and good crane flying (I used to rig red iron) is wonderful stuff, I've worked with the best. But to have that finesse in the woods, or on rough, uncertain ground -- that's darn near voodoo. Add to that the ability to run and maintain and FIX your toys, and I'd say pound for pound, modern loggers win.
put a rubber tired hoe on a hill , skidders are stable. If you think a good modern equipment operator doesn't need brains , than than you are lacking in such
As said doing final finishing with a road grader is right up there for requiring skill. But sometimes I'm just as impressed with a fairly easy to operate machine where the operator hits way out of his class and can do amazing things.
I've been around construction since 1980 or so not as an operator but from the survey and engineering end. I remember these two guys on a big rail road construction job in the early 80s in northern BC, one a graderman and one a lowly belly scraper operator. We were pulling a huge cut section bringing the ground down a couple hundred feet to grade. It was a fairly soft clay so it was critical to keep the slope even exactly 2:1 all the way down to hit where we were aiming for and also so it would be stable when wet. I was the stake jockey marking grade stakes as we went to make sure everything was kosher.
Today you'd pull that cut and make the slope with huge excavators but back then they were just coming on stream and were slow and expensive. These two guys did it all. An old busted up guy in a belly scraper took the outside lane all day and no one else touched it. By eye he'd move over a couple feet, lower his blade and fill up the box with his steady one foot cut, then bounce down the fill and dump it. Over and over, with a push cat when it got sloppy. So this is being done with a wiggly old buggy with slow jerky hydraulics from 15 feet in the air. After him in comes grader dude. With a wing blade on. He'd flatten out behind the scraper with his belly blade and looking over his shoulder he'd jog on the wing set along the slope. He'd take a pass or two and I'd bring down some more stakes. These guys were right on the money pass after pass. Maybe a recut or two to get going in the morning but once they got their groove it looked like someone polished the slope and it was dead straight. I've seen a lot of amazing stuff over the years but nothing that really tops what those old boys could do in those old machines IMO.
Mastering a road grader to the point of being a finish grade operator isn't for amateurs either.
YOU got that right That being said every body so far is right but lots of guys have a NATURAL ability on [ ] and it's a ball to run them. the level of difficulty comes in acessing the lift, material to be moved, condition of soil [ site]steepness ,draining the swamp, keeping the machine above ground , or the crane on its outriggers,, not getting yourself backed into a corner and in lots of cases haveing a machine on site BIGGER THAN YOURS just in case
norm
I was in the Operating Engineers Apprenticeship Program for two years. 'Had to eventually drop out due to lack of work prospects at the time in Northeast Ohio. I lived just a few minutes from the training facility, and we were allowed to go play around on anything they had over there as long as one of the instructors was on sight. I got to learn how to operate a lot of equipment. For me the toughest hands down were the road graders. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make that darned blade cut flat and smooth-I'd have it tilted to one side, or rolled too far forward or back. Hard as I tried, I just never got the hang of it. The cranes never seemed too bad to me, with the exception of an old Garwood we had set up with a clam bucket. I never really did figure out how to cast the bucket out very far. Easiest for me were the dozers. We had a D-7 hydraulic and two TD-18 cable blades. Loved those old 18's.
Operating anything is easy. We call them guys "lever pullers".
Doing the job efficiently and safely is a total different game.
I would say getting proficient on a dragline is one of the tricky ones. Lots of "feel" involved in them. As mentioned, road graders can be tricky, especially the old knuckle busters.
+1, Friction drag lines are as tough as it gets IMHO.
I have spent my whole life working around heavy equipment. Ran most of it except the cranes where I worked as a rigger. To me one of the toughest jobs was building road on slopes with a straight blade dozer. You would have to carry planks with you so you could put one under the side of the track to get your bit to bite into the hill to start your cut and then maintain your cut and grade. Back in the mid 70s when I was in college I ran a dozer for the Forest service during fire season. The dozer boss would tell us " we want a fire line up that ridge top" and we would put a line up there no matter what.The thing that separates seat warmers from skilled operators is that feel in the seat of your pants. It takes a lot of seat time in a piece of equipment to be able to feel what your machine is doing.
And Dave Skinner, yes I have been up to my armpits in a piece of machinery trying to chase a blown 6 wire hyd. hose buried in a mess to get loose to replace. People think we are nuts for driving our combines around steep hillsides but it is no different than anything else. If you are brought up around it you don't know any different. Good operators are fun to watch. I know that they have worked hard at their trade and they should be commended.
Writing from the gateway to the great BluMtns in southeastern Washington.
Just remember, "You are the trailer park and I am the tornado". Beth Dutton, Yellowstone.
Hawk, A few guys around here have used those to spray with. But parts are getting so expensive that they have sold them. Had a friend last year that did a major service on his and on his test flight got about 100 ft in the air and something let loose in the control system on the main rotor. The stick became so violent that he could not hang onto it anymore and beat his legs to the point they were severely bruised. He came back down in a pile and stuff flew everywhere. Luckily nobody was hurt and he did not hit anything on the ground. They had to kick the front window out and cut him out of the seat. Spent a couple days in the hospital with some broken ribs and other than being beat up was pretty lucky.
Last edited by BluMtn; 06/17/15.
Writing from the gateway to the great BluMtns in southeastern Washington.
Just remember, "You are the trailer park and I am the tornado". Beth Dutton, Yellowstone.
You highly experienced guys know a bunch better than someone like me, but I though it was difficult working a big land plane behind a D8 on AZ desert land at 120+ degrees ambient. The added heat and motion from that rig created its own thermal twister of rising dust. I was very inexperienced but eventually got the hang of it, but it never got to be fun. Gary, worked an early Gradall in the late 50s - I thought it was great for its purpose but very tricky for a young dude. I never became really proficient with any big equipment as my career efforts were elsewhere, but the temp work memories are good. These days, a backhoe, or loader or skidsteer are plenty for me.
Swinging nearly 8,000 pounds of concrete from off the truck around to the rear or other side place and swing around for another and averaging 1 ever 45 seconds to a minute, truck after truck after truck with no breaks and usually working 10 or more hours for days on end. All kind of ways to screw up and injure or kill, and usually having to fight the traffic authority and job supper the whole time. Not to mention those jobs where lanes have to be closed and the hefty fines if you don't finish on time so that the lanes are reopened on schedule.
Or those bridge jobs where you should have had a crane twice the size, but still have to get the job done anyway!!! Having to back a truck crane up the side of an embankment just to get with in reach of the job, and then have to use your outriggers to jack up the crane to where its level, and there is no one but yourself to hop in and out of the cab to place 60 pound or better 4'x6"x8" cribbing under the pads, so many that by the time your done you can walk under fully erect underneath the engine, and if you don't have enough cribbing your scrounging all over the construction site trying to find anything usable to get the crane level (safely).
And of course there's always the fact that most times you never now the people your going to be working with and who is going to be doing the rigging.... Big IF there.
If your lucky you get a crew and super that understands something about cranes capacity's and their charts, most don't give a hoot, just get it set up and get it done.
Easy, sometimes you might have to go through the whole thing a half dozen times or more a day.
That's the smaller cranes, the large cranes are a whole nother story and just as much work.
Never minded the physical work, its the always having people in harms way.
Cranes are no different than any other piece of heavy equipment, there is a lot of risk all around.
With the Playstation generation, computerized joystick equipment of today does not compare to the equipment that had a different lever for each movement of the machine operation..
Big difference.
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Thomas Jefferson
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