Dumbass

I had to help clean up after one just like this.

Houses on a hill with retaining walls. Driveways pointing out into the street. The dumbshit “Borrowed” it from his workplace, they had rented it from the one I worked at.

Because of the retaining walls, one unfinished with rebar sticking up two feet out of the ground, the guy couldn’t set the outriggers down.

Then said genius tried to pick up and swing FULL STACKS of lumber with the boom extended!

He got a little past the center line of the truck frame and over she went.

That rebar I mentioned?

Went right through a fuel tank and part of the cab.

It literally looked like someone had run a burst of machine gun fire down the side.

Diesel spill plus the hydraulic oil caused the fire dept to come out.

We had to hire and even bigger crane to come lift the thing back upright, AFTER we cut the kinked boom off in sections.

The boom had gone through the corner of the roof of the house because he was still swinging when it went over.

I can only imagine what the bill for all that shit wound up being but a twelve ton truck crane was probably over a hundred grand all by its self.

All said and done with the house, crane, renting the bigger one on an emergency call, the fire dept, oil containment and cleanup ,six of our guys out there plus a flat bed to haul the cut off boom sections off, easy hundred and fifty thousand.

9 thoughts on “Dumbass

  1. I can’t even remember how many trees I took apart using a crane.
    It is in the hundreds. The thing was always parked almost directly under the tree and the boom was practically straight up and down. We had plenty of days that were real hairy, but never did we come close to ever having the outriggers come off the ground. Once we had a tree on the back side of a garage pretty mangled up from a bad wind storm. We couldn’t get as close to it as was usual. That day we brought in a way over sized crane and took it apart in smaller pieces. It was pricey, but I got the job. Customer said a few other competitors straight up said to just call me to do it as I had my company set up for that purpose.
    I don’t miss doing it at all. Way too much stress and Mr. Murphy never takes a day off.

  2. 50 years ago, I worked a summer job with a guy who was studying to become a member of the Operating Engineers union – the guys who run cranes and that sort of equipment. I was impressed by the books he showed me. It was like a first year college physics course.

    Except the final exams are many times more likely to kill your ass.

    • My Dad was a 35 year member and an International Representative for the Operating Engineers.
      At one point he was lobbying politicians up on Capitol Hill.
      He used to tell the story of everytime he would introduce himself he would get strange looks and some people would almost literally run away.
      He couldn’t figure it out until someone pointed out that then Senator Ron Paul had the same name.
      😆😆

  3. After all that the house and property would be worth pretty much Zero because of the oil and diesel spills. You can clean it but at a high cost and will they get all of it.

  4. Why, oh why, don’t they SPOOL DOWN as soon as the crane outriggers leave the ground?? Better to slam the load than lose the whole shebang! MUCH cheaper. It’s not like the lifting sling (or whatever) snaps or fails like I see in the Turd World videos…

    Maybe that’s too intelligent of a thing to do??

  5. College summer. Building the Jefferson County jail in Golden Colorado. Idiot trying to move wheeled crane forward perpendicular to the slope with boom up. Yeah you know what happened. I was about 30 yards below the tip of the boom after landing but in a trench. The small pyramid piece at the top landed smack dab on a bundle of steel trusses and gained a new rectangle shape.

    • ps All the other operating engineers could make their equipment dance truly a thing of beauty to see.

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