That gusty day in Odessa taught me about boom angle the hard way

Back in 2011 I was running a 50 ton on a gas plant job outside Odessa. The wind was steady at 25 mph but I figured I could handle a quick pick of a skid, maybe 6,000 lbs. Halfway through the swing I felt the load start to dance and the tag line guy lost his footing. I dropped the load fast, no damage but it shook me, I mean really shook me. After that I started checking the anemometer every 15 minutes on anything over 15,000 lbs, no exceptions. Have any of you switched up your wind limits after a close call like that?

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williamh657d ago

Man, that tag line guy losing his footing is the part that would keep me up at night. Here is what I want to know though, when you dropped that load, did you have a guy on the ground yelling at you or did you just make the call on your own? The reason I ask is because everybody talks about wind limits and charts and all that, but the real question is how fast you can read a load that is starting to get away from you. Was the skid already swinging past your radius when you dumped it, or did you catch it early enough that it just came straight down? I have been on jobs where the super tells you to keep swinging no matter what, and I am wondering if you had any pushback from the crew after that day. Seems like a close call like that changes how you run a machine but it also changes who trusts you in the seat.

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