What is the dumbest thing you have done with your equipment ?

[seville009]

Skidsteer with a snowblower - when I'm done blowing snow, I lift the blower up high and tilt it all the way down and shake it to knock off excess snow before putting it in the garage. Was too close to the house, and when I was shaking the blower, the back end slid into the side of the garage and pushed in the wall/stud about three inches.

Same skidsteer - during the summer.....was trying to fix a wet spot under some trees in the field - moving dirt around under a large tree. Skidsteer died all of the sudden. I had driven straight into the stub if a tree limb (that I had cut years earlier) and it went into the top of my cab right into my overhead instrument panel. Was only doing the work because it was a nice day and I was bored. Cost me about $1,500....

 

[JasperFrank]

20 years of maintaining our assement road. Only to have all the original residents die or move out, and then be asked to sign up with, and contribute to, a road maintenenace HOA agreement.

 

[CobyRupert]

One cold morning, I left for a field intending to load a truck & gooseneck trailer full of round bale hay….

I left the truck engine on, put the steering in a straight line and put it in neutral. Turned on headlights, 4 ways & beacon. Ran back to tractor and plunged the bale spear into the back lower bale at the end of the trailer. I pushed the trailer and the truck up the hill in a straight line until the trucks front tires came to a rest on the public road. Put tractor E-brake on and ran back up to the truck...

Put truck back in neutral and ran back to tractor, which was holding me from rolling backwards.
Got back in tractor and pushed the entire truck onto the road blocking traffic from both directions. By the grace of God, there was a small development road directly across the street.

A woman came out of her house screaming at me about all the mud I left on “her” development road. I said “its a public street”, jumped in my truck and left.

This was good. Got to do what you got to do. Like they also say: “Get ‘er done!”

 

[Thomas]

Years ago I was mowing field with L2800 next pass by came upon dark cloud just above the ground,stop rear tire over yellow jacket hive hoping R4 would fill in the hole...WRONG got stung couple time before I was able shut the engine off and scoot,day later and spray can bee killer mowing continue.

 

[sixdogs]

I used to take the belly mower deck off my B7800 by putting a chain on the front weight bracket to lift the front of the tractor off the ground with a 100 HP loader tractor. Then I easily slid the mower out underneath.

It worked until one day I just barely clipped the edge of the hood with my loader bucket by maybe 0.10". Over $600 worth of parts 18 years ago and I just went ahead and ordered everything the same day in order to wash off my stupid move.

 

[Oz_Kioti]

Not long after getting my first tractor with a FEL (47hp LG/LS) my brother and I were cleaning out the rocks & boulders from a section of creek at the bottom of our property, so it would be deep enough to form a good reservoir to pump from.

I had the tractor right in the creek, facing upstream, and managed to get the bucket under a large boulder. It stayed in the bucket when I crowded it - good - so I raised the FEL in order to reverse out and up onto the bank. As the back wheels went up the bank, I had to raise the FEL even more to clear another large boulder on the edge of the creek bank.

Just at that point, the right rear wheel went down in a small hollow in the ground. My brother's expression as he saw a looming tractor roll-over coming his way, said it all. Just as the whole tractor lurched sideways with the left rear up off the ground, I grabbed the FEL joystick, pushed it forward, the bucket and boulder hit the ground with a thud, and the tractor settled back onto four wheels!

I learned a lot that day, and thankfully it didn't cost me.

 

[mo1]

Dumbest thing I ever did was planting a few passes with the wrong row spacing when using a new piece of equipment. I saw the furrows I had just made looked too close to the tractor's tire tracks from that pass, the middle ones were just barely inside of the tracks when they should have been spaced evenly. Stopped and looked and sure enough, the spacing was wrong. Second dumbest thing was to drive off after thinking I put the fuel cap back on, but forgot to actually do so.

 

[marhar]

The Second dumbest thing I have done: Again working with my father. We were pulling logs out of the woods to have them milled. I chained up to a large popular tree, put the tractor in low 1 and slowly pulled the log. The log hung on the base of another tree and the front end of the tractor came off the wheels. Low 1 does not seem that fast when pulling but when the tractor stopped pulling and started raising off the ground low 1 is fast. I pressed the clutch as fast as I could, the front in came down; I though I was going to have to take a break and clean up.....it was close.

 

[jaxs]

Seeing the "2 men and a truck"ads,Jeb and Hoot decided they could do that. First job was disposing of old toilets,pipe busted tile and other debris from a second story remodel. After a couple trips down stairs with armloads of trash Jeb came up with the idea to lower stuff in a barrel using a rope and pulley system. They sat the filled barrel at edge of balcony,rigged the rope and pulley on a 4x4 extending out passed balcony. Jeb ran down,tied loose end of rope off to a tree then rushed back upstairs where Hoot would stand on 4x4 while Joe slide barrel over the edge. Great,Hoot's 300+ weight held 4x4 in place while Jeb returned to ground level,untied rope from tree in preparation for lowering barrel to the ground. The barrel being much heavier than Jeb hoisted him up as the barrel fell toward ground. As Jeb and barrel collided as they met,Jeb suffered a mangled ear but Jeb hung on to that rope. At the same moment Jeb reached the 4x4 and sprung his wrist, the bottom fell out of barrel and dumped contents on impact with ground then being lighter than Jeb headed back up as Jeb plunged back down. Jeb only suffered scratches as he collided with barrel this time. When Jeb hit the ground he let go of rope sending barrel on it's way down again. What was left of barrel didn't injure Jeb but when Hoot stepped off 4x4 to look over edge to see what was going on,the 4x4 put a knot on Jeb's head. After studying the situation Hoot suggested Jeb pull the truck beneath balcony and let him toss the remainder down into the bed.

 

[5030]

Here's a good one for you. Put my wife in ER when I swung the boom around on the Mini Ex and knocked her silly with it. Never saw her but believe me I got reamed big time and almost was relegated to sleeping in the barn for a while. No lasting injury other than some nice bruises and a bad headache. Thought I killed her at first, just knocked her out.

 

[sixdogs]

Another one of the many dumb things was back decades ago. The wife was helping me turn larger branches into firewood. Since I had taken "Time and Motion" classes in school that teach you how to engineer repetitive tasks more efficiently, we had a rhythm of she would pick up and hold while I kicked aside the recently cut wood and prepped for the next cut.

That's pick, kick, lift and cut; pick, kick, lift and cut; pick, kick lift and cut. Unfortunately, one was pick, kick, cut and oops. We got the rhythm out of order and I nicked her little finger with the tip of the chainsaw. It was just a nick and all was good.


Off to an old rural doc in a nearby town and when he asked my passive wife how it happened, she explained that "my husband cut me with a chainsaw". Whoa.

After the explanation, we all has a good laugh, no stitches were needed and I figured we best keep our chores gender-specific, She keeps the hearth and home and I do the rough things and maintenance . So far, it's working.


EDIT--wife told me she got two stitches.

 

[Kschwennsen]

hauled a 35' telephone pole in a 12' trailer. Just a bit of trailer sway, but I made it home.

 

[kellerw]

Dumbest thing ever done with compact tractor: attempting to pull t-posts from ground with rear implement mounts. Pulled tractor front end off ground, snapped off a tail light. Did NOT get the post out of the ground. Moral: pull posts by hand or dig around them before trying to pull

 

[jkahan]

oh jesus -- am in my mid 50s -- have used tractors since I was about 6 and have done plenty of stupid things -- thank goodness nobody has been hurt or vehicles / property ruined -- 2 things come immediately to mind -- once -- clipped an electric meter (attached to my barn) with my bucket -- luckily no sparks or anything -- scariest thing was when I got caught between my backhoe and cabbed tractor -- tolerances for getting the backhoe hooked up were insanely tight -- luckily got out with only minor scratches; sold my backhoe the next week back to the dealer. Ended up (and I know I am lucky to afford this) buying a used excavator -- which brings me to stupid thing #3 ... felled tree took out windshield -- thank god for safety glass and Kubota insurance - beside having a "wet seat" moment -- only cost was Kubota deductible.

reminds me of the silly axiom -- only people that don't have chainsaw accidents are people that don't use chainsaws....

 

[Buckeye Guy]

Got two; First one I stupidly tried mowing a low marshy area too early in the spring and got my mower stuck. Got my tractor stuck trying to pull out the mower. Got my truck stuck trying to pull out the tractor. Got my buddies 4wd wrecker stuck trying to pull out my truck. Everything froze in the ground overnight. Took my neighbors dozer and a whole lot of chain to pull everything out and made a huge mess. second one I forgot to latch my trailer to the hitch, and when pulling my tractor onto the trailer put a huge dent in the tailgate of my fairly new truck.

 

[houska]

On the more comical / harmless side, we have one of these metal pole and canvas / small hoop barn-like garages as a lightweight storage shed. First year with the new (compact) tractor, I was not intending to use it during that winter so thought I'd park it inside and let it hibernate there until spring.

When driving through the doorway, I had to duck in the driver's seat to make it through. I did not cotton on that if my head, held normally, is too high to pass, the same might be true for the ROPS and backhoe behind me. Keeping carefully crouched behind the steering wheel, I eventually noticed that somehow the tractor wasn't moving. At least relative to the garage/shed top. But both tractor and garage were moving relative to the ground. It turns out I pulled out the anchors and dragged it -- undamaged -- about 6 feet.

My laughing wife helped me reanchor it at the new location and bend a few poles back to the originally intended angles.

 

[Tractorrr]

When trying to get the loader back on my bx somehow the attachment points on loader fell down below the attachment points on the tractor. Took about 45 minutes to get it back on. Not sure how that happened other that I was on asphalt with slight hill and usually put it back on on level ground concrete.

 

[2516mo]

Two things come to mind:

I was mowing with a finsh mower and my old 8n. I like mowing so I was having a good time, as this was a volunteer project, just me the tractor/mower and a nice early morning, helping out.
I was doing just fine when I discovered that one of the 3 blades had come off,
I shut off the PTO and discovered the bolt and blade were just gone.
I had a spare, so drove home and bolted on the new one and finished up.
It turns out that the blade had indeed come off and buried itself in the side of the bank of the near by city road, only 6 inches from the top. Could have struck a car, or hurt someone.
Same field where I was mowing on a Sunday with my brand new work phone in my pocket..never found that phone. Had to find a store that sold that exact phone and get them to replace it on the account before work Monday morning. Someone that I told asked if I called the phone to find it. When I explained it was on vibrate, he asked if I called it and looked for the grass to wiggle!
Funny man!

The other time was coming home from work. I used to threaten to quit and get a job mowing on the side of the highway. When I see these guys in the enclosed cabs just mowing and making things look good, I envy what they get to do. Well, that particular evening, I looked over and sure enough guy was mowing a head high bank of grass, but not moving. As we got closer, you could see that he was high centered over a concrete drainage ditch that ran from the highway to the area below. The rear wheel was just lazily spinning and he was not going anywhere. I knew right then and there, that would happen to me, and I never threatened to quit again.

 

[kwbobwi]

Sold them
2 Farmall H's, 1 Farmall A and a Farmall Cub

 

[CJONE]

Use my equipment for free, cost me more than anything! Let no good deed go unpunished. CJ