Overheard a guy at the yard saying he never uses the load chart for small lifts

I used to think I could eyeball everything under 5 tons. Then last Tuesday I heard an old operator named Chuck tell a new guy that he'd dropped a 4 ton beam 6 years ago because he guessed the radius wrong by 3 feet. That stuck with me. I looked up the math later and realized I'd been overloading my rig by nearly 800 pounds on some jobs. Pulled out my load chart Friday for a 3 ton HVAC unit and it sat perfect. Anyone else catch themselves skipping the chart on the light stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

patriciam221mo ago

My buddy Tim dropped a 2-ton duct last spring skipping the chart.

sean_park81mo ago

You know I always thought the chart was just some old school thing people did to look busy, but after seeing a 2-ton swing like that without it I get it now. That's a LOT of weight to just guess at and hope it works out. One wrong move and you're not just fixing a duct you're fixing a whole mess. Tim's lucky he walked away from that one. This whole thing really flipped my view on skipping those steps.