Appreciation post: That one time a 2-hour pick turned into a 10-hour nightmare in Dallas

We had a 40-ton load that looked straightforward, but the ground crew's signal was off by 3 feet the whole time. Anyone else ever have a simple lift go sideways because of bad communication?

3 comments

3 Comments

sandrashah9d ago

Wait, three feet off on a signal and nobody caught it before the lift? That's not just a bad signal, that's a total breakdown in the spotter and operator checks. How does that even happen with a load that size?

barnes.mary10d ago

Oh totally, it's never just the one thing. We had a crew once where the hand signals were just... wrong, like their "easy down" was everyone else's "stop." Took us forever to even figure out we were reading different books, then the whole lift plan was junk. By the time you re-rig and get new eyes on it, half your day is gone.

ellis.ben10d ago

Bad communication" turning a 2-hour job into a 10-hour one sounds like a stretch. Three feet off on a signal for a 40-ton lift is a problem, sure, but that's why you double-check before you commit. Feels like there's more to the story, maybe some other stuff went wrong too. A full shift over that alone just doesn't add up.