Pulled 14,000 cubic yards in one shift and nobody believed me

I've been running a cutter suction dredge on the Mississippi for about 7 years now. Last Tuesday we had a job clearing silt near Baton Rouge and the conditions were perfect. My totalizer hit 14,000 cubic yards in a single 12 hour shift. I told my supervisor and he just laughed and said to check the meter. I took a photo of the screen and sent it to him. Has anyone else had a shift where the numbers just lined up and you hit something crazy?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannaht291mo ago

Wait, was your totalizer reading bank cubic yards or loose cubic yards?

leo_kelly1mo ago

Hold on 14,000 cubic yards in a 12 hour shift on a cutter suction dredge? That math doesn't work out right. Even with perfect conditions, a standard 12 inch cutter suction dredge tops out around 500 to 600 cubic yards per hour if you're running wide open and the material is light. That gives you maybe 7,200 yards max in 12 hours. For you to hit 14,000, you'd need to be pumping over 1,100 yards per hour every single hour, which is almost double what most rigs can do. Unless you're running a massive dredge like a 24 inch or bigger, your totalizer might have been set to the wrong measurement units or it counted a cumulative total from a previous shift. I've seen guys mix up cubic yards and bank cubic yards before, and it throws the numbers way off.