Taylortractornut
Elite Member
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2002
- Messages
- 2,921
- Location
- Iuka Mississippi USA
- Tractor
- 3550 Fard Backhoe and a 1948 Farmall Cub,
I ve been operating heay equipment for about 15 years since I was 14. Today I did something my brother or had hasnt i rolled the D5B off the side of a 4 foot tall lowboy. We dont have a lowoy so another company hauls it for us. Ive loaded this dozer tons of times on this same trailer I hate. It has an all steel dove tail and the five wants to claw around on them. We had a leak in the belly pan wheick being in a landfill isnt aloowed so we parked it and arranged a spot at a heavy equipment shop. I heard the lowboy comming and got ready he pulls around the building and right infront of where I was. I made him pull up till he was level. When I loaded I didnt have any trouble I noticed the lowboy squatted abit and I thought about backing off right there. I went ahead and had it lined up right watching the insides of my blade trunnion arms to make sure that I was in the center. When I got the the front I idled the engine down, pulled up the park brake and put it in neutral, and set the blade down. When I set the blade down I felt like I was sitting in a car slipping on ice. I saw the bed sliding and thought thats not good. THen Itgot real fast and slow agin. I had my belt on and had a kungfu grip on the gaurd around the shifter and gripped the blade control lever likewise. When the left track hit she went on ovet to the top of the Rops. My head never hit the ground My cell phone flew out of my covveralls pocket ringing and hit me in the head. As soon as the machine hit i reached up and pushed the throttle forawrd to kill it. It puffed a few balls of oil smoke. Donny my worker ran around behinde the machine expecting the wors I was still strapped in and he reached around me kinda choking me I looked at his pale face and told him We wasnt married to quit huggin me. I just stepped out of the cab and nder the limb risers. I was more worried about the machine. Donny ran to get dad. Hewas about to have a come apart. The lowboy driver hauled a** an dad called his boss over it. It was mainly my fault I let the driver judge the placement of the truck, HeI should have walked around and checked it as I usually do when ever Im loading a truck I didnt drive there. He had parked the tuck on a bag in the road but thetrailer has a set of airbags that came out from a selflevleing car transport. Turns out whe nI loaded the levelers had leveled it up till I got onto it. I was more embarrassed than any thing. Dad said hed load it monday I told him as soon as we get it flipped an let the oil run back down Id be back up there. Dad and I had just talked about haow dangerous it was It had been raining and that bed treatment they use is slick. It was raining out to. It shocked me about how easy the difficult part of loading was. Ive run this machine since I was 14 and Ive loaded hundreds of machines from all sorts of rollers and compactors to, 12 to30 yard scrapers, skid steeres excavators loaders and giant cranes. And of all the danged luck crashed the D5. My older brother got there he gave me the new name of Crash Lambert. We just took dads Kubota and hauled several buckets of sawdust under the airborn side to cushion the final drives and under carriagge when it landed back flat. we then hooked a choker cable to the trunnion ball and then to the rear of the compactor and pulled it back over and let it set a minute then bumped the started to check for and oil on the pistons to prevent a busted piston ot bent rod. Later dad told me that when he was a young man he was on a job and and opertor fell off a trailer on a hydraulic bladed dozer that had the PCU on the back to run a cable scraper. The long handlethat reaces down to the PCU pinned him behind the ear and killed him. My wife was calling me when the phone fell and she thought I had ung up on her She called a little miffed, itold her I was crashing at that moment lol. I found all the bolts I v lost out of my pockets that were under the seat to.
