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Pro tip: Don't trust a crane operator who says 'close enough'
Last Tuesday in Portland, I was lowering a big oak limb onto a truck and my rigging line got pinched between the branch and the bole. The crane guy was off by about a foot on his angle and it twisted the whole setup. I had to cut the rope free with a handsaw while hanging in my saddle, which took 15 sweaty minutes I won't get back. Anyone else had a crane op ignore your hand signals and cause a mess?
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wyatt_fox683mo ago
Riley said "that foot of difference in angle he thought was fine turned my lift into a twisted mess" and that hits hard. But I gotta say, maybe the real issue isn't just the crane op saying "close enough." It's that we're all running these jobs on tight schedules where nobody wants to be the one slowing things down. The crane guy probably felt rushed by the ground crew or the homeowner watching. I've had ops tell me later they knew they were off but figured they'd "adjust on the fly" cause the client was tapping their watch. Sometimes that foot of error is really a foot of pressure from everyone else standing around not wanting to wait.
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riley5953mo ago
Got a rope chair real quick reading this cause yeah I used to think it was all about having good hand signals too until I had a crane operator think "close enough" meant he could stop adjusting his boom and just let me deal with the rest. I mean, that foot of difference in angle he thought was fine turned my lift into a twisted mess where my line got pinched so bad I had to saw it off one handed while dangling there. Idk maybe it's just me but when someone's off by a foot on a limb that size you're not saving time you're just asking for a rescue situation. Really changed my mind on how much small errors matter when you're the one hanging in the tree.
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