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Rant: I was told you always need a full crew for a 12-inch cutterhead job on the Mississippi
Last season near Vicksburg, we had a tight schedule and two guys out sick. Instead of shutting down, I ran the dredge with just a deckhand and myself by pre-setting all the swing winch limits and using remote cameras on the spuds. We moved 15% more material that week than the same job with a full crew the year before. Has anyone else tried running lean on a big cutter and found it actually works?
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uma_webb286mo ago
Honestly used to think you needed all hands on deck for that size cutter. Your story makes a lot of sense though.
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faithgonzalez6mo ago
Yeah, the "built in cushion" idea is so real. I found the same thing just by timing how long each setup step actually took versus how long we were told to budget. Once you know the real time, you can plan way tighter and skip the panic.
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ramirez.blair6mo ago
My uncle ran a small print shop for thirty years and always said the rule books are written for the worst case scenario. Your story about the cutterhead reminds me of that. He'd run big jobs with half the staff by setting up all the paper feeders in advance, same as your winch limits. It feels like a lot of jobs have built in cushion for problems that only happen 5% of the time. When you cut that out and just focus on the main task, you can sometimes get way more done with less hassle.
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