Nothing highlights the fact that every man is still a 12 year-old boy inside better than heavy equipment. In related news, I've started learning to operate our big toys at work. While any major maintenance on our agency flood control structures is annually contracted out to big engineering firms and construction companies (and is actually the largest part of our operational budget), we have acquired a Cat 299D2 and associated F-450 over the last few years for doing small maintenance ourselves. This is the domain of our survey chief, who also does the small maintenance of our structures as the other part of his job. He has a background as a former equipment operator for the county roads department in his more distant past.
As a big believer in the "nothing should die with any one person should they get hit by a bus theory of management, I recently asked if I could start learning the big toys. I've driven a skid steer back in high school days as part of the large dirt work effort to get the local racetrack SCCA sanctioned, but it wasn't precision work: pickup dirt with the bucket, move it around without tipping the machine and putting it in the dump truck without anything bad happening to the dump truck or the rental Bobcat. Our CAT 299D2 at the Flood Commission is a different beast in all the best ways. Compared to the usual Bobcat you see around, this machine is about twice the size and twice the weight. It is also tremendously more powerful and stable, and there is all the traction and floatation on soft surfaces. Better living through tracked vehicles certainly applies here.
This thing is seriously fun to operate, and the cab is a good place to be. Well heated and air conditioned, comfy seat and quieter than you might expect. It is powerful enough to command respect at the controls at all times. Top speed is around 10mph, but plant the foot throttle override and it will get there quick enough to push you back in the seat a bit. Get the bucket height or angle a bit wrong clearing weeds and it will dig a hole you didn't want without the slightest hesitation. Knocking down small trees (say 6-inch diameter trunks at the biggest) that had sprouted in the ponding area will deeply satisfy your inner 12 year old. Raise the bucket up to about eye level to protect windshield/door and simply knock them down by driving forward. Then pickup the remains and place it in the pile. Most of the time cleaning up this retention pond (named for a LOTR character) was spent making passes with the bucket very slightly scraping the ground to remove weeds. It wasn't as pretty as the work done by the guy who actually knows what he's doing on the machine, but I got it done. It was a fantastic way to spend a morning, and I'll get better with more seat time at the controls.
The act of operating this machine reminded me of welding in a number of ways. With the attention paid to what you're doing and the constant hum of the engine and main hydraulic pump, you're largely in your own little world running the machine. Like welding, you are intensely focused on one thing, largely to the exclusion of the rest of the world and getting immediate feedback on how well you're doing it, or not. It is a strangely relaxing activity, much like I find welding.
While I hauled loads of the weeds and trees away this morning via our dump trailer, the normal operator back dragged the whole place and made it look pretty. I should've taken a final picture.
The most interesting part of running the skid steer is actually loading and unloading it. Being a tracked vehicle, it goes over the dovetail angle on the trailer by climbing up it, and then tipping down to the deck when the center of gravity is reached. Ditto for unloading, where it tracks straight back until tipping backwards on the dovetail and ramps. I've seen this done a bunch of times and know what is going to happen, but the experience of inching up/back and the machine tipping and hitting at the controls is pucker inducing. That 11,000ish pound machine lands with enough force to rock an F-450 and gooseneck trailer like a go cart.
The F-450 tows it like champ with 4.88 gears. Plenty of power and is happy to set the cruise at 75mph on the highway, with confidence inspiring braking. In fact, the truck always feels a bit silly to drive until it has about 10,000lbs behind it. Adding up the 11,000ish lbs operating weight of the machine (with bucket, some attachments are heavier), 5,300lbs for the gooseneck trailer, 8,600lbs curb weight Ford says for the F-450 and some back of the envelope estimates for the flatbed and tool boxes and, huh, I don't think we're actually under 26,000lbs gross going down the road, it is heavy. The only downside to the F-450 is the relatively narrow P225R19.5 traction tires means 4x4 is quickly engaged on any soft off-road surface. Even empty, it doesn't do much floatation. We only occasionally get it spectacularly stuck in the mud in monsoon season.
The good news out of this besides being fun and useful for us to have a backup operator is that I'll get to do more of it to become competent. Down the road, our survey guy is retiring in two years. Beyond being good for us to have a second person up to speed on the skid steer, there's no guarantee the future survey person is going to have an equipment operator background, or necessarily be interested in becoming one. We're a small agency, and we're good at letting folks carve out unique niches that suit their skills and keep them happy. It isn't impossible that I move towards taking over a more leading role in the structure maintenance and playing with big toys down the road, especially since I should be getting a flood warning system assistant next year. An assistant that we envision eventually taking over much of the Flood Warning System maintenance could certainly free me up to focus on other things down the road.
