Rant: A new guy on the site asked me why I was checking the load chart for the third time

We were setting steel in Kansas City last month, and I was running a Grove RT880E. This apprentice rigger walked up and said, 'You already looked at that book twice, what's left to know?' I just told him the chart doesn't change, but my focus might, and a missed decimal is a bad day. He actually stood there and watched me do the whole pre-op. Anyone else have a simple moment that made a new hand actually stop and think?

3 comments

3 Comments

emery_taylor11d ago

Read a story once about a crane that tipped because someone misread the chart for a different boom length. The math was right but for the wrong setup. Your story about the decimal point is the same kind of quiet mistake. That apprentice learned more in those five minutes than in a week of just watching. The old guys are right, that book is all that stands between a good day and a news story.

willow_garcia12d ago

Our old foreman called that chart the company's cheapest insurance policy.

sean_walker455d ago

Man, that's so true. @emery_taylor's crane story is exactly why. That chart isn't just paper, it's the final check before things go really wrong. Calling it cheap insurance is spot on, because the cost of ignoring it is way too high.