Just Do It!

After a few hiccups, we were soon sailing along, panels flying up onto the building on a regular basis and making the schedule work. The real puzzle would come later when we reached a level where our ‘dinosaurs’ wouldn’t work any longer. And for that work we would need a large crane, but it had to be mobile. The city wasn’t going to allow us to block off this important street for more than 4 hours at a time, and a ‘crawler’ type of crane with a fixed boom length would require just that much time to get ready for the first hoist. I would need a very tall self-propelled hydraulic crane. And a very expensive one at that.

After some discussion with the general contractor, we figured out a way to have that same crane hoist material for the roofer and HVAC contractor; that would ease the burden by splitting the cost 3 ways. But it would mean that I would have to wait until those other contractors were ready. In the meantime, I arranged for our 15 ton Link-Belt hydro to be delivered from our warehouse in Reno. It only had a 125’ of boom on it, but it would help.

The Link-Belt was an odd piece of equipment; it had been purchased to hoist panels at our Lake Tahoe Harvey’s project because it was an all terrain crane, the kind with the really big tires! It had to work in snow and ice and those tires were perfect for that. But there was no snow or ice in Sacramento and the tires became a liability as they couldn’t be driven more than 25 mph and must be rested (cooled off) every ten miles. Our office and yard were about 10 miles away and it was a slow drive every morning.

A memory; we had a crane operator but I would sometimes operate it when he was busy doing something else. (We used him as general labor at times) And when it came time to send the crane back to Reno, a truck with a lowboy trailer arrived and it became my job to get the crane onto the trailer. Well, those big tires hung over the trailer by about six inches on each side. This left about 2’ of tire still on the trailer, but each time I went to drive on the ramp, I would look down and see nothing but air beneath the tire on my side. Yikes! And I would quickly back away. The poor truck driver kept signaling me that all was fine, that I was doing it right, but without being able to see the right side of the trailer; my senses kept telling me that I was heading for a fall. And I would back off…about 6 times in a row before I decided to close my eyes and go for it. Very embarrassing!