Big Loads - Post Photos Number 2

Got the truck all cleaned up. Can't wait till winters over!

 

How long were those beams?

I don't think that I could describe in words, doing that kind of job. Reefer trucks go to grocery warehouses. Steel haulers go in and out of steel mills. You are going into a makeshift jobsite, where everything has to be trucked in and everything has to be trucked out. And when it is done, there will be no sign that there ever was a jobsite there. It's different. It's completely different in that everyone on that site is doing the exact same thing that a driver does every day. The workers, the job boss...everyone is living out of a suitcase, away from home...trying to do a job and send money to the family. Someone has to bring in all the road machine. Someone has to bring in all the office trailers. Someone has to bring in all the containers. The cranes have to be shipped in. And then the big loads come in. And then everything has to be shipped out. All the hardware and welders and tools, in containers. The cranes. The office buildings, all going to the next job.

There have been jobs that I went on in Oklahoma, that years later, the same crane and rigging crew remember me in western Kansas. We go to the same restaurants, the same bars, work the same projects until that project ends and I will see them somewhere else. It changes everyone's perception of the driver when they are living out of a suitcase too.

"I know you! I met you before! I cant remember where, but I met you." Had a driver say that to me in Pennsylvania. I was sitting in a bar having dinner. "Well Hell driver, if you know me, let me buy you a drink."

 

Skoot, you're a machine.

 

They were just little ones, they were 113 feet that put me at 131 feet overall length. You are right on about makeshift job sites. You will never see a box back through a creek to make a delivery and then have to retrieve the trailer from the creek because when they picked the beam up the dolly rolled back into the creek. You also get to know which crane crews are right on the money and which crews are nothing better than a cluster ####.

 

There's an outfit here (V. Van Dyke) that does precast & super-long. Always an impressive show when they roll. Their steer cars have more axles than I do.

 

Same trailer for 5 years, same parking spot for the last 3.
Roll in to grab the wagon for a quick job.
I can do this with my eyes closed.
Thunk, the neck hits the ramps....
Thunk, the slack out of the neck and we have liftoff.....
BAM!!!!
"What the? Oh, you have got to be kidding me!!!!!"
What did I do?.......

 

Uh oh

 

Skooter thought I saw you Fri going east we were going west

 

had yer eyes closed huh?

 

Out on 695 about 1/2 hour after morning curfew ended? You have on a big excavator?