farm safety?

I was on the case board and the subject of farm safety came up. I know we've all done things then looked back and thought "WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKIN?" Would like to here your experiences.

Here's mine: Had a 7700 jd combine with a problem with the hydro. To pull it you have to take off the drive wheel. So I jack it up, pull the wheel and remove the hydro. After it's fixed I replace it. Did it wrong the first time so had to do it again. Did it wrong the second time too (you're shocked right?). So as I'm getting ready to pull it for the third time I have my "oh boy" thought, that thing has been sitting on a hydraulic jack while I lay under it to remove that. Wow, how lucky was I?. Well this time I do it right, jack it up and get my 6x6s and stack up a nice bridge underneath, even leave the jack under with no presure for extra safety. After I remove the wheel bolt and break the wheel loose the combine shifted, fell off the jack and bridgeing. The platform came down on my head knocking me out. I woke up with a bloody nose and fat lip laying in the wheel with the combine platform resting on the tire. Guess I came close to dead that day. I did get the hydro fixed and back in tho.

I am a safety professional by trade, however a couple of years ago, I was trying to hook up my mower to my TO-20. It was over 100 degrees in Kansas and I could not get the three point arms to line up. I was getting frustrated and I lost my temper. Now everyone knows that in order for the hydraulic on the 3 point hitch to work, the PTO must be ingaged. Well, like an idiot, I put one leg inside of the triange and attempted to get some leverage. I had a string on my freyed jeans that hit the PTO and split my jeans to the crotch, instantly. Had they not been really old and well worn jeans, it most likely would have drug me in and killed me. Just a couple of seconds of not thinking and it could have been all over. I sat down and shook for a half an hour.

When i was in High school we watched a video on farm safety. This was in the early days of video. Anyway the guy doing the video was wearing one of those white lab coats. As he's standing in front of a tractor running an auger you can see the wind blow his coat, then it's gone. Between frames on the video the pto caught his coat and ripped it off. He kept talking for a bit til he realised his coat was gone then started looking around. They broke down the video frame by frame and you never see the coat being pulled, one frame its on just puffed out the next frame it's on the pto shaft.

I remember seeing stills of that in Farm Journal or something. It was like he kept right on talking without a clue anything had even happened. I'm sure it didn't look that way in person or watching the film.

I had a buddy in high school (a long time ago) that was under a Ford Maverick working on the rear axle while the car was up on cheap import jack stands. My buddy climbed out from under the car to get another wrench and "SLAM !!!" one of the jack stands broke and the car fell on the garage floor. He could have been under the car.

A few years ago I was spreading fertilizer with our big A in winter when it was below zero out. The farmer told me to spread thru the waterways and they were fine to cross. He forgot about the sink hole which of course I found at 18 mph. It abruptly stopped exploding the auto trans and I went thru the windshield. I walked up to a farm house about a 1/2 mile away where a farmer I know was working on a John Deere A and had the rear end up on home bilt stands tires off, and working under the tractor. I was cut up and bleeding, he got out from under the tractor to get me some towels and band aides and as we stood in the door way fixing myself the tractor just fell off the stands. He was quite shaken up and thanked me for actually saving his life. Things work out kinda funny some times. We still talk about it now and then.

That is exactly what it looked like.

When I was 18 my Dad sent me to change a tire on our 3/4 ton Ford. He said I could have the rest of the afternoon off after the tire was changed. We had an axle screw jack and I slid under the truck and raised the axle. I slid back out took the flat tire off and i discovered I hadn't raised the axle high enough. I slid back under and I grabbed the jack handle and the jack slid off the axle, The axle skinned my head as it hit the ground and the bed pinned me. instead of an afternoon off I spent it in the hospital. I was so lucky my head wasn't 1/2 inch closer to the axle.

Sure wish somebody could find that video! I's like to see it!

I was out one morning doing some brushogging with an 8N. The morning got a little warmer so I took of my jacket and spread it on the seat and continued on my way. Bout 5 minutes later a sleeve got caught on the PTO. Snatched that jacket out from under me like lightning. I almost went with it. Don"t ever get complacent!

I went to work on a produce farm at a very young age.
Wonderful farmer I worked for taught me everything I needed to know about maintaining his Allis Chalmer's tractors.
Up until then all I knew was the John Deere my dad had.
He also showed me how to plow with the snap coupler set up, how to pull a
disk and a drag behind one safely
He preached regularly about the narrow front ends and how if you turned too
short you could pull a drag right up over the fender of the tractor and take
your own head off.
That's exactly how he died.

I remember reading in the Farm Journal years ago back at my parent's house. This farmer took his feed mixer to a farm down the road to feed his cattle. He moved the unloading auger by hand and it was running. The top end of the auger shaft sticking out about an inch caught on his coveralls at his chest. It twisted his coveralls so tight he couldn't breath. He got his pocket knife out and tried to cut the clothing but the knife broke. Just before he was ready to pass out he heard the tractor engine rev up as the drive belts on the mixer had burned up and broke. Saving his life. What a story!

It's not just farm safety, it's safety in general. You always hear about complaciency getting you, but it often has nothing to do with complaciency, and everything to do with the simple fact that NOTHING is perfect, and ANYTHING can happen because of that, no matter how careful you are. I've always heard there is no such thing as an accident but anyone that believes that must believe in a perfect world where nothing ever wears out, or goes wrong without someone knowing about, and repairing it immediately.

My closest call happened putting the undercarriage on a D9G back together about 4 years ago. The way the machine was setting there was no getting a serviced truck to the right side of it to set the track frame. The only thing around big enough to set where you had to set, and pick the weight, was the customers 345 CAT excavator. So, we used it with him operating. He's a lifelong equipment operator so it's not like him to screw up.

Had the track frame almost in place but it was hitting on the hardbar. We had taken the tension off of the picking lines so I could safetly get between the frame and the side of the machine to give the jack holding the hard bar up a few more strokes when we saw what was holding things up. From there it took me a couple of minutes to get in place, see exactly how much movent was needed, and give the jack about two strokes. On the third stroke I heard something pop. Don't know why, but instinct told me to get out of there FAST.... so I commenced to moving backwards as fast as I could. In maybe half a second I was about 5 feet from the end of the frame, and still moving, when the frame jumped straight up about 6 feet, swung and slammed into the side of the machine about three times and then dropped down and hung there about 2 feet off the ground. Standing there watching it happened it seemed like an eternity, but it probably all happened in less than 3 seconds.

I finally stopped and looked around to see my Dad about 20 feet behind me, as he too took off running when he saw the frame jump, and the customer setting in the machine with his hands thrown up in the air and a stunned look on his face.

Seeing 11,000 lbs jump and hit a 30,000 piece right where my head was a few seconds before scared the crap out of me to the point I just had to set down and collect my wits for a few minutes.

At the time no one knew what exactly happend. The customer thought MAYBE his coat had caught on the control lever causing the boom to raise up and cause the frame to jump, and as close as it came to killing me it scared the crap out of him too. We didn't find out the real cause of the problem until several weeks later.

Several days after the accident the 345 started acting up a little on the boom controls and kept getting progressivly worse. Turns out the pilot valve (the one the lever operates) had started leaking by just a little bit. At the time of the accident no one knew anything was wrong because it wasn't leaking enough by to cause any unwanted movement when loading, etc with it. With it just sitting there holding a load, it had time to leak enough pressure by to start moving the main spool and putting pressure on the bottom of the boom trying to raise it. With the track frame in a bind, when I hit that third stroke on the jack it came unbound and it was like unleashing a stretched rubber band and letting it snap. In this case the stretch equalled about 2 feet, and so was hard enough to pick up the frame like it did.

Like I said, no matter how careful you are when you work around dangerous machines your always just seconds from being seriously injured or killed, no matter now careful you try to be, because it's not all about being careful. Being careful can do nothing but lessen the chance of getting hurt, it can never make it go completely away....

So, think smart, be safe, and most importantly, make sure your wife has a good insurance policy on you to make sure she is taken care of if the odds ever catch up with you.

Wow, so many close calls. And occasionally we all do hear of the ones who were not so lucky.
Lets take a moment be thankful and another moment to remember those who died working their tractors.

The one close call I can remember right now is I am changing the oil on my Camry. Does not require you actually getting under the car, but it is easier if you jack it up a bit to reach under.
SO I have it jacked up with the floor jack about 3 of 4 inches. Wheels still on ground. Drop the dam drain plug and it rolls under car. wiggle in under car on my back and 6 yr Mark starts to play with handle on floor jack. Turn my head to the left to tell him stop it and he manages to release the jack. Frame comes down right on my temple and stops. If i had not turned my head my forehead would have had a good dent in it and maybe cracked.
Pete

(quoted from post at 16:25:57 08/11/12) I am a safety professional by trade, however a couple of years ago, I was trying to hook up my mower to my TO-20. It was over 100 degrees in Kansas and I could not get the three point arms to line up. I was getting frustrated and I lost my temper. Now everyone knows that in order for the hydraulic on the 3 point hitch to work, the PTO must be ingaged. Well, like an idiot, I put one leg inside of the triange and attempted to get some leverage. I had a string on my freyed jeans that hit the PTO and split my jeans to the crotch, instantly. Had they not been really old and well worn jeans, it most likely would have drug me in and killed me. Just a couple of seconds of not thinking and it could have been all over. I sat down and shook for a half an hour.

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That's why Harry had a cap made that covered the PTO shaft, those tractors should not be operated without it.