What is the funniest thing you ever saw in operating heavy equipment

[atsah]

I was running an excavator a few years back, I was back filling a foundation, there was a few guys working on the inside of the house, I took a scoop of gravel, I saw something come out of the bucket and hit the ground running, the front door was open, a monster rat ran right into the house and out the workers came running for all they were worth..

 

[jix]

MY neighbor had a well driiled. It was 465 feet to hit water..at ten dollars a foot. I needed one too... but I witched it with two pieces of bent coathanger first. Dig here I told the driller. He hit an artesian at 100 feet that flowed.twenjy gallons a minute and tested very pure. Well driller was unhappy.. Don't tell your neighbor he said..and show me how to witch for water. I still haven't showed him how it is done, but I witched a few other wells for neighbors with good results. I dunno why it works, but it does!

 

[jix]

My pal in in Minneapolis had a 4 cyl gas ford tractor and the engine started running backwards in low gear...off to the the ford tractor dealer it went

Three days later, it still ran backwards in low gear. Turned out the be a cracked distributor arm at a $1.59. Ford dealer was embarrassed. They had torn the tractor down trying to figger it out.

 

[ishiboo]

I have a Woods 650 backhoe for my tractor. I used to do a fair bit of "custom" work with it as it was small and light and I could get into tight places without tearing up the landscaping.

Feller called me, said he'd decided to reactivate an old well to use for watering his garden, and would I come dig up the well head for him? He know right where it was, wouldn't take but a few minutes.

Loaded up, went over and he was wandering around with his witching sticks to locate the exact spot to dig. After a moment he scuffed a mark in the lawn with his heel and said "Dig right there, it's down about 3 or 4 feet."

Dandy, I set up and commenced digging. Sure enough, at about 3 1/2 feet I hit something. Something white, PVC, about 4" in diameter. One of the laterals on his septic drain field.

He scratched his head for a bit, witched around a bit more and marked another spot. I sat up and dug and hit MORE white gold.

Long, LONG story short, I dug up his septic system in four different spots and never did find his well. Seeing as I was just digging where he told me, he realized he was in no position to try to hold me responsible for the damage.

Never did hear how much it cost to get it fixed or if he ever did find the old well.

Around here a well has to be 100' from any septic system, and that old one would have had to be abandoned. Not that it always happens

 

[PILOON]

An excavation friend offered me some garden soil so wanting to be maximum cost effective I hitched my 12 ft tandem trailer to my 3/4ton 4 x 4 and had him load me up.
Being a good friend he LOADED me! Heaped the PU and heaped the trailer.
Springs did not sag.
Drove off, down shifted as I approached the lights and tried the brakes.(3 speed is not syncro to 1st)
I said tried, that was more load than brakes and I looked to where I would crash with the least damage--thankfully the lights changed to green and the guy at the stop spun his wheels leaving the curb.

The rest of the way home was long and s l o w. Fortunately only 4 miles to go.

 

[oosik]

I lived & worked in Anchorage, AK for many, many years. One spring the government was expanding the sewerage system and installing a large collector pipe system. When the pipe was laid, inspected and approved, the contractor was using a D8 Cat to backfill the trench.

The cat & driver got in some swampy material and they started sinking. Fight as he would - all that his actions did was sink the unit further. They retrieved the cat driver with the bucket of a massive crawler backhoe. Until it was retrieved - all you could see of the cat was the remaining top foot or so of the exhaust stack.

Also humorous - here is this rather large work site with around a dozen workers standing around watching the cat slowly disappear - and then here is the site supervisor - running around like some kind of spastic monkey - arms flailing every which way - shouting out orders and everybody else just standing around laughing.

Gotta admit - I had to chuckle also.

 

[jix]

We had about 40,000 Lbs of dynamite in 40 lb boxes to build into aerial delivery pallets for LAPES airdrop onto the polar ice. after the pallets were built, they had to be sling hoisted onto an aircraft loading traiier and then rolled into a Herc aircraft. the only crane in Thule was an old mechanical crane and only one man knew how to operate it. Suddenly the man suffered a heart attack and he had to be medevaced to Denmark, leaving us with all this dynamite we could not lift. The whole operation was stalled and the airplanes and aircrews could not do the LAPES drop to the geophysical scienists who were waiting out on the Ice for it. They were supposed to do seismic mapping of the sea bottom with it. (LAPES is a method of dropping heavy cargo from a HERC aircraft at about ten feet of altitude using parachutes to drtag the pallets out the open rear door of the airplane at about 200 mph, after which it slides for some distance.. The LAPES technique is quit difficult and dangerous, so it is no longer a routine procedure anymore.)
Anyways, there we all were twiddling our thumbs because no one was available to run the crane, and no one would volunteer to try it with 40,000 lbs of dynamite to be lifted up about twelve feet in the air and then swung onto the loading trailer.

The guy in charge of this operation was a Canadian Air Force Major name of Ray (surname withheld) He was not a popular boss, but he was a good pilot, if nothing else. Ray made a command decision on the spot. He appointed himself Crane operator, probably thinking that if he could fly a Herc, he could darn sure run a 60 year old crane. Orders were issued, sllings were attatched and the lift operation began, with some considerable trepidity. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near this affair while Ray was running the crane. There were some guesses about how far away you had to be if a 40,000 lb load of dynamite got dropped onto a permafrost runway from 12 feet in the air. The crowd instinct said that if we watched from inside a hangar about 800 yards away, we would not be killed, so that is where we all congregated for the event. Some of the lads made little private wagers on the outcome as they watched. A small number of men were necessary to be close to the loading trailer to help with guidance. This small group of heroes was selected from among the ones who desperately wanted promotion, of course.
After some initial shouted orders, Ray fired up the diesel engine of the crane and moved the machine towards the dynamite. When the hook was directly over the load, he spooled out slack and those heroes nearby attached the slings, then gave Ray the thumbs-up signal and the load began to rise, slowly, to the height needed. Ray stopped hoisting at this point. There was some relaxation among the watchers, but no lessening of their watchfulness. Every one was thinking about how big a hole it would make if it blew.
Ray wiped his palms on his flying suit pantlegs and began to swing the crane around to position the load above the loading trailer. But Ray had forgotten that doing this changed the balance point of the old crane, which had no outrigger stabilizers...and so it was getting pretty hairy and tippy. He might have made it, but mother nature had a part in the operation, too. The wind came up, suddenly, as it does in Thule. Then slowly and inexorably, the crane began to tip over. Down came the dynamite with a fairly solid thump, .....but no explosion.

But the crane continued to tip, and then the steel framework of the crane boom fell right on top of the dynamite with a heck of a crash.

Still no explosion. Wheew! The silence was deafening.

Ray slowly climbed out of the wreckage of the old crane and wobbled away. As he did, he was heard to shout his final orders " Don't nobody touch nuthin!'

Nobody wanted to touch nothing, I don`t think.
The mess sat there for about a week until finally we flew a boom truck in by HERC from Denmark, cleaned up the wreckage, rebuilt the dynamite pallet and delivered the dynamite onto the polar ice to the scientists. Ray started to dye his hair.

Surprisingly, Ray got promoted. Now all he flies is a desk. He was the light colonel in charge of arctic re-supply by airlift.Last I heard he had white hair.

 

[Looking4new]

Poor Ray. What ever possessed him to think that he could run that crane with no training? I suppose he just climbed up into a Herc one day and flew it with no training, too?

 

[varmint]

I had a buddy who was in the Air Force in the 60's. He was stationed in the Midwest, and would visit his girlfriend on the weekends, about an hour away from the base. He had to be back, on duty, at 6AM on Monday mornings. He would often spend as much time as possible with his girlfriend, leaving her at just the last possible moment. He happened to have a 1965 faded blue-gray Ford Fairlane, but not just any old Ford. This one had been built as a salesman's demonstrator by Nascar's Holman Moody shops, with a full-on racing hand built engine and suspension, etc., but otherwise was a real sleeper. He would whip up the deserted interstate in the early morning winter darkness, usually nicely over 100mph, keeping watch in his mirror for troopers resting on the back side of the overpasses. Whenever he would see red lights come on behind him, he would punch it to well over 150mph, totally ditching the cop, then take the first exit he came to, where he would slowly come back onto the interstate just after the cop went by. Nobody was looking for a farmer's dirty Ford Fairlane, so this trick worked many times. He said the car got about 5 mpg at 150. I should add that he was a skilled mechanic, who had built drag racers and thought nothing of tearing into an automatic transmission to change shift points, etc. He had marveled at the engine's internals when he told me about this in the 70's.

 

[narampa]

:laughing::laughing::laughing: