A Trucker's Tale – Concrete, Jackhammers, And Absurdities

Nov 20, 2024 - one year ago

No construction battalion would have been able to construct much of anything without concrete.

A Truckers Tale — *This is the undocumented motor grader which met its not-so-glorious fate.*

We arrived “in country” with two brand-spanking-new concrete mixers mounted on International truck frames. As with the Autocar’s looks, they were not real pretty, but at least they were new.

During one of our daily rainstorms, one of the mixer drivers slid off a slick dirt road and became stuck in a shallow ditch. He left the truck running, so the concrete would continue mixing, and he walked a short distance down to our maintenance shop. He asked a friend if he would bring a bulldozer to pull him out of the ditch. The mechanic, allowing he was only a mechanic, and not an experienced dozer operator, agreed to help his friend. After securing several heavy chains to the dozer, the mixer driver bummed a ride by perching on the dozer’s fuel tank as the mechanic drove to the concrete mixer.

Surveying the muddy conditions upon arrival at the site, the mechanic suggested using the dozer’s blade to push the mixer backward, rather than pull it, out of the ditch. The mixer driver also thought this was the better plan since he didn’t have to crawl into the mud to hook the chains to the rear of the mixer. But their attempt failed, and not only did the mixer stay put, but they also inadvertently pushed the mixer’s power takeoff (PTO) shaft through the radiator and into the fan, shutting the motor off, which in turn, stopped the mixer from turning. In the ninety-degree heat, the concrete hardened pretty damned quickly.

The accident happened on a busy road, so it did not take long before “those in authority” were on the scene. The mixer driver and the mechanic were instructed to now use the chains, the ones they should have used to begin with, to pull the mixer backward out of the ditch. They were ordered to tow the mixer down beside the maintenance shop, and to park it beside a large, diesel-powered air compressor. They soon learned the air compressor would power the jackhammers they would both be using.

Over the next week to ten days, those poor fellows spent their days inside the steel mixer drum. After they removed the cover from a man-sized hole on the outside of the drum, which all mixers have so they can be cleaned, they would lower a jackhammer into the hole and start working at it. They’d rotate shifts, and as the jackhammer worked, cement dust would boil from the manhole. After the “inside man” had worked for a while, he would climb out to clear his eyes and lungs, while the other one went in for his shift. Each time they crawled out of the manhole for a break, or a cigarette, or a meal, they had to dust themselves off. I can still picture the sights of them doing this, as it looked more like dogs shaking themselves after having fallen into a pit of baking flour.

We could gauge their daily progress as we watched the pile of concrete chunks grow as they tossed them out through the manhole. When they finally finished the job of jackhammering and removing the hardened concrete from the mixer, the pile looked more like two loads of concrete. Thank God this life lesson—to not use a dozer to push the front of a concrete mixer out of the mud—was learned because of someone else’s mistake.

Not far from where the jackhammer operators were working was the gravesite of (probably) one of the most absurd situations I had ever witnessed.

When our battalion arrived at Camp Haines, it took ownership responsibility for all equipment left by the previous battalion. An inventory was completed, it showed that our battalion was now in possession of a Galion motor grader, although it had not been included on any previous inventory. We heard that calls had been made, lists had been rechecked, and that no one had found any record that the grader ever belonged to any battalion. (I realize it sounds like I made this up, but no record was found that this motor grader ever existed.)

I was not privy to the answer of why we were not allowed to use the grader, but our division headquarters sent word to “get rid of it.” Of course, we all agreed this order had been misinterpreted by the leaders of our battalion, and that we would soon be allowed to use the Galion, which the grader operators referred to as the best grader in our whole inventory.

We soon learned that “get rid of it” meant exactly what it said. The builders requested that they be allowed to remove the engine, so they could configure it as a generator to provide electricity to a local school. Their plea was denied, as they were told, “If one school has one, then all the schools would want one.” Once again, division headquarters sent word to get rid of the Galion motor grader.

On the day of the Galion’s death, the mechanics thought it would be sporting to have a contest to see who could guess the correct number of minutes the grader’s engine would run if it had no oil. They drained the oil from the motor and removed the oil filters, and then they fired-it-up and let it run “wide open.” I think it ran between seven to ten minutes before it finally seized.

A bulldozer operator had already dug the burial pit, so the mechanics used cutting torches to cut the grader in half. The dozer pushed the Galion into the hole and covered it.

Absurd, you say? No, it gets better. The real absurdity came two days later when division headquarters sent word for us to remove the engine so the builders could install it at the (aforementioned) schoolhouse! Hey, at least the mechanics were excited to have learned the engine could run without oil for up to ten minutes.

Another snippet of absurdity was observed when used pieces of equipment were loaded onto barges, and then taken out into the ocean and pushed-off into the sea. We were told this was cheaper than sending all of it back home. We should have just left the used equipment—after draining all the oil—for the North Vietnamese after Saigon fell.

Ed Miller ([email protected]) has more than 40 years of management and ownership experience in the trucking industry. Today, he is a part-time tour bus driver, published author of “A Trucker’s Tale”, and regular contributor to Supply Post. He is a father of three and a grandfather of two, and lives with his wife in Rising Sun, Maryland.