Back in my prime i spent a good bit of time using manlifts
Nov 29, 2018, 10:45 AM
to work on overhead cranes. I haven't fully maxed out a 135', but I've been in them. Most of our stuff can be reached with a fully extended 60'er or an articulating 45'er.
It's real fun when to climb out of one onto a crane/building roof, or have one shut down on you because the rental company doesn't properly maintain them. I've sat in one stuck for hours waiting on the rental company to come manually lower me to the ground.
I got over my fear of heights pretty quickly.
You wouldn't believe how much you get tossed around in that basket... think about being cantilevered out that far and hitting a small bump with the wheels. A 3" rock will bounce your feet 2' in the air like it's nothing.
That replaced the lights in radio towers and such. He would tell stories off the swaying of three hundred foot towers and having to crawl and reach out to get to stuff. Even hanging by one hand a time or two without safety harness. Not skeerd of heights but dang man!
He died of heart attack. Probably from reliving all the nightmares.
outside to access the roof to get pictures for an engineering firm that was designing an expansion. THe lift hit a rock, guy was about 25ft up and might have fell out if he was tied off to the lift.
150' is the largest I've been up in. We've had a 185' come through our store but it never came off the truck at the shop so i didn't get a chance to go up in it. I'll go in any boomlift that you want, but #### a scissor lift.
I was a trainer for a little while as well. I've seen some for sure Billy bad-asses basically cry and crouch down in the platform until i would take them back down to the ground.
insides of an electrical generating boiler. It's dark AF in there even with the all the work lights during a shutdown.
Picture a metal frame, (2) 2"x 8"x10' as seats, and me and another guy on either end of the "crane", controlling the air winches that are raising us up. Its kinda like a window washing lift you see on skyscrapers.
Then one of the air winch cables either jams up, or the cable slips beside itself winding, and one side of the crane falls about 3 feet.
The pucker factor is YUUUGE. Once my hard hard fell off at the top of the boiler, and it took about 10 seconds for it to hit the ground.
I'm glad I was young when I did that. I'd never do it again.
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