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Spent 3 hours trying to level a mobile crane on a slope in Austin yesterday
I was setting up on a job off I-35 and the ground was way worse than the site plan showed. Took me forever to get the outriggers right because one pad kept sinking into the dirt. Has anyone else had a site survey be totally wrong about the actual conditions?
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jordan_hill3d ago
Last month we had a job near Round Rock where the survey said "compacted fill" and we showed up to basically loose gravel over mud. One outrigger sank a full foot before we caught it. Had to bring in those big steel cribbing mats from the rental yard and that ate up another hour and a half of our morning. The client got mad about the delay but what are you supposed to do when the ground decides to be different than what's on paper?
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kai_burns733d ago
Erickelly, I've been in the crane game for twenty years now and I can tell you that site surveys are only as good as the day they were done. Heavy spring rains or a dry summer can change things fast. @jordan_hill did the right thing by catching that outrigger sink before it turned into a flip. I always tell my guys to walk the whole pad with a steel probe before even leveling up, especially on fill jobs. Round Rock has a lot of that clay mix that looks solid until you put real weight on it. A little extra prep time upfront beats renting mats and explaining delays to a mad client any day.
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Site surveys are usually pretty accurate, maybe you just got unlucky with that spot lmao.
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