Not exactly tractor related but perhaps relevant..

Long weekend here north of the border and the new guy in my group is stuck working on Sunday. Smart enough person but because new is unsure of himself. Pert of the job is to lift a heavy component and place this on a stand. normally we have one guy running the crane and a spotter to observe the lift and to yell if it is not going right. So this afternoon the poerson who organizes the work 'forgot" to mention that a spotter is needed. I spoke up and told him "no spotter no lifting" period. people are getting more and more stupid.

If something doesn't go right, I would rather be the crane operator then the spotter!

No sir, crane operator is responsible for the whole show he has some major liability

(quoted from post at 13:10:17 05/19/17) Long weekend here north of the border and the new guy in my group is stuck working on Sunday. Smart enough person but because new is unsure of himself. Pert of the job is to lift a heavy component and place this on a stand. normally we have one guy running the crane and a spotter to observe the lift and to yell if it is not going right. So this afternoon the poerson who organizes the work 'forgot" to mention that a spotter is needed. I spoke up and told him "no spotter no lifting" period. people are getting more and more stupid.

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Maybe he is not stupid, but had the spotter in the plan but just forgot to tell you. Maybe he doesn't know how important you are.

I've worked with bosses like that trying to
cut corners and save money. There trying to
impress people higher up the chain. It
usually gets someone hurt .

I was a crane operator with a large company for 35 yrs. and the plant manager said many times that "I was the only person in the plant that could put him in prison"! I retired in '01 and when I was working, I carried a brief case full of certifications that had to be renewed yearly. The company sent me all over the country for training updates. We had to know about slings, shackles, wire rope, rigging, and safety factors involved with a lift. Since I left, all the training and certification has been dropped and they contract out operators. Cost savings is the reason, but who now is accountable if something goes wrong?
In line with the conversation.....the operator has liability for any and all things that are involved with the lift. One of the big things is WEIGHT, in the old days you seldom knew the weight of the lift, that thankfully changed thru the yrs.

I've often wandered who was found liable on the crane accident years ago, when they were building Brewer Stadium. They were attempting to set a giant roof section, with "Big Blue". I believe it was over 200 thousand. Strong lateral winds. The operator didn't want to attempt, but the iron foreman talked him into it. It's on youtube. You can hear the left main boom pin shear off. Several fatalities.

Have a friend who retired as a crane operator last year. I had a lot of questions about accidents and he was good enough to explain things.

Basically as stated the operator is supposed to refuse to make a lift if anything isn't right. But he told me that often a foreman or site manager would try to bully the operator in to making a lift to keep a project on schedule. The company my friend retired from contracted out crane services and it was in the contract that if the operator said no it wasn't going to happen. He told me of many times when a site manager would threaten to find a different contractor and or get him fired. He claims that the company he worked for was good about it. If the contractor called and said "your guy is refusing to make a lift, we want a different operator". His company would point out that according to the contract if that were to happen they would pack up, bring the carne back and bill the contractor for the entire job. He had been happy there and insist that the company was very safety oriented. He also said that certain construction companies were blacklisted and they would refuse to send a crane out because of safety issues.

He also explained that most modern cranes have onboard computers that won't allow the carne to make a lift if it exceeds the capacity of the crane. There is an override built into the system and some operators will use that and make a lift anyway. They are also supposed to refuse to make a lift if wind speeds exceed a certain point.

Thing to remember is that when a company wins a bid they have a specified start and finish date. They most often have to post a bond that they lose if they are not done on time. The companies often have a bonus in the contract if work is completed ahead of schedule. Many companies share that bonus with the site managers, foremen and workers. So the lure of money causes some people to take risks to get that bonus. Plus the company is under pressure to complete on time because of the bond.

Rick

We had wind monitors on the boom.....OSHA has standards for allowable wind speed. When I was in the seat, nobody talked me into anything that I felt was unsafe.

Not knowing the proper descriptive term to use, I'll say the "extendable outriggers" on a large crane working from a bridge over the Boise River would have closed both lanes of the road. The job was tried without them - the state highway commission wasn't prepared for a road closure. The crane went over the side and crushed a man's legs. The crane fell around 200 feet. It laid on the river bank until spring when high water allowed it to be floated out on pontoons.

I had an OSHA 10 class and they talked about it and showed the video of it. If I remember correctly, the crane operator refused to do the lift because of high winds and the size of the lift. He left the job and a supervisor decided to run the crane. There where some big shots who where there to watch, they got to see people in a man basket suspended from another crane fall to their deaths.