Back up to a pump that is too close to power lines

A few years back on a late afternoon way up in the hills of Marin County, Ca. I had finally gotten my cleanup after waiting over an hour for it, I get the truck pumped off he washes up and the driver starts to leave. He plans on backing down the narrow one lane road with switch backs one after another. I stop him and explaine to him that the road we were on goes around like a loop, so there was no need for him to back down. Well this guy tells me hes been delivering concrete all over these hills long before I was even in diapers and he knows whats best. Okay bud have at it! I watch him start his way around the first curve, oh and you know he was talking on his cell phone while doing so. He barely gets out of sight and I hear this big crash bang sound. I walk down to where he was and see his mixer backed into two brand new cars. I guess he put his foot in his mouth there huh.

I had a driver one day backing up to the pump and would not pay attention to his sales man that was backing him up and he went off in a ditch.the truck came to a rest agianst a tree on the ladder.He was about 20 feet from the pump,and the RM company would not move it until it was empty.And we are about an hour from town..so no wrecker.SO guess what i got to do?!! Thats right fold up back up to the truck,SET BACK UP and empty out ONE truck couldn't get the others by were we we're at.I get him empty FOLD UP AGIAN pull back up ,SET BACK UP and finish the job......hows that for DUMB!?!?!?!

Now if I was a good typest I could give a list a mile long but for the most part the dumbest thing would have to be for them to wake up in the morning....lol

The worst for me has been back wash about 75 gallons of water into my hopper while I was pumping. The cure for that was swing my boom over his truck the next time I seen him and release the air cuff.

Finally a post I can comment on. When I use to work construction, I became a paving machine operator (hated it) but every morning I would help the mechanic brake down the machine and re-build it and the paving crew would set the grade and wires that the machine would run off of, The wire is ran the full length of the job, they are what keeps the paving machine on grade. Then we would go home for couple of hours and come back at night and lay concrete, well one night a cement driver ran over a COUPLE of stands and pulled all the wire....we had to scramble to set everything back up, try to keep the concrete from drying in front of the paving machine and hold all the mixer trucks up at the plant. I think we ended up working an extra 4-5 hours longer that night, because of that incident

Little: I'm gonna tell a story on McPhails,which is now Shamrock.Seems a little grout pump was working in Belvedere(to everyone else THE most expensive piece of real estate in the USA(, it can cost $30,000,000 for a house) when hot shit driver came around a corner and raised his tag axle. The left wheel caught the edge of the Mayco C-30, flipped it over a 2 foot rock wall, and it and about 250' of 2" hose went into the San Francisco bay! But Ive seen dumber stuff!

the driver just leave my hopper untill its empty without alarming the operator, luckily the next truck was behind him.

the dumb things that drivers perpetrate every day are legion. here are but a few 1. keep discharging when the pump is clearly stopped and i am standing there not at all ready and spilling literally two yards of mud. 2. leave the water on while waiting to back up destroying the whole load. this was also the clean up on a "one at a time" 300 yard saturday pour in san francisco during the winter. fun! 3. hitting my e-stop when i am 11 stories in the air and the man lift only goes to the 7th story. leaving me to have to jam down four stories on ladders, and wait for the man lift "express" just to turn the button. 4. locking the chute and jamming the accelerator, almost decapitating me before i dropped to the ground. more to come

I have to many. My best is, The guy backed up to me,No SH--,Asked me what it was.He ask me what I was running.I told him to back up,I will work your truck and show you how to do it.The guy was floored that a truck could put concrete on the second floor.

Ruck

 I'm not a mixer driver,but the dumbest thing I ever did was not  listen to my Fathers advice and continue with my education.............

(WOMAN) Driver pulls into new subdivision and comes to complete stop at bottom of hill. Puts truck in low - low and procedes up hill.

All the while discharging the entire load all over the new paving.

truck driver named Sam backs up till he hits the pump at this time I'm screaming,waving for him to stop he pulls up puts it in hi range floors it backs up till he hits the pump again,repeats until he knocked me completely off my pads luckily the ground was as hard as woodpecker lips and it was a old Whiteman s tube so he didn't tear the hopper up just dented my 180 pipe coming out the hopper,

  Does he work for Do----?If so he must have just started.He seemed very cordial,heck what driver isn't that was trained by Mr.Leroy.

hes retired now thank the lord but he worked for h-ck and f-liciana r/mix i know mr leroy ive never nad any problems with him

Was pumping a house slab in Austin Tx, using those donkey braying sounding mix on site trucks. I was at the bottom of a pretty steep grade about 70 ft long. He just barely gets his rears over the curb and all of a sudden jumps out to survey the situation. Oh forgot to tell you, never set parking brake. So here is this 85k truck free rolling toward the back of my new Schwing 32m. This guy finally realizes what is happening and instead of atleast trying to jump in the cab he starts grabbing rocks and pitching them under the tires in an attempt to chock them. LOL. Well the discharge chute acted a a ramp as it is connected to the bumper area of his truck and this rig ended up on my hopper, crushing it, the agitator, etc. Y'all shoulda seen him trying to throw rocks under the tires....I about peed myself....all this in about 15 seconds.

I was pumping sidewalks at a golf course. There was a certian route the trucks had to take. One guy decides he wants to take a short cut, up the hill. He crests the hill goes into a sand trap and turns the mixer over. Hey buddy heres your sign....LOL

pumped 50 yrds of concrete with 3% cal on a 50 degree day, when the 6th truck pulls up the drive way and decides that the path the other 5 drivers had taken was no longer a siutable route and decides to drive off the driveway and tip the truck up against a large maple tree blocking truck 5 and myself in. Then about 2hrs later they finally right him and he says he going to dump into my pump. DUMB!!!!!

get to the back of my pump to find about two yards on the ground, I asked what happend and the mixer driver says "it's your fault, I had the drum turning perfect and you kept stopping"  Mixer drivers make me shake my head so much I prolly look like a freakin bobble head most days. If you can fog a mirror, Hired.... as a professional.

On the last yard in the mixer I heard a big clunk clunk A big chunk let go inside the mixer.  The driver keeps discharging untill it hits his loading hopper and bends it up.  The driver realizes it won't fit out the opening revs his truck up and mixes it to break up the chunk denting his drum to shit.  And it never broke up. I was laughing the whole time seeing this and talk to the driver told him to go back home talk to his mechanic and he would jack hammer it into small enough peices and then come back here and dump the rest of his mud. The driver thought it was a good idea, never seen him again.

On the Cifa site you can see me pumping a job with a Cifa 24m. I think it was 3000 yds in a month under a 26' ceiling.My 3rd day a driver had a BIG chunk fall into the discharge chute, blocking it! The other driver picked up the slack while the first driver beat the chunk with MY hammer letting it fall into the hopper!