Hammer goes to the Dark Side...

Saw the blurb on my phone at work and now just watched.

Hell of a day for him, can't imagine the emotions going thru him first time out.

You ever see any footage of him in the shifter kart Lawson built him? Dude was quick!
 
@Ontario Outlaw is always telling me I need to tell more stories, so here's the story of the Time Saver that wasn't.

This was Oklahoma, in the later 80s, back before Oklahoma really had DOT cops. The OHP did have a size and weight division, but it was small, so small that we rarely saw them. If we did see them, it was often as not that a competitor had dropped a dime on us to let them know we were moving a rig.

So we have a short, easy move. Just under three miles straight west down a nice fairly flat County Road. No power lines, no houses, just 2 section lines roads to cross. One of those roads had a very dense wind row of trees growing along the east side of it, which is important in a minute. Back then, everyone in the rig moving business would bootleg short easy runs like this, it was off the beaten path, no permits, no worries.

Standard oilfield derrick is 142 feet tall. It's made up of nine major pieces: 2 a-legs, and three sets of matched pieces that make up the sides of the derrick, plus the crown. To save time, the plan was just to jerk the A-legs, drop either end on bolsters on the back of the winch trucks, and push you pull me the derrick in one piece down to the new location. The base ended up being a bit too wide fit on the bolster, so we pulled another section and loaded it back up. So we ended up with 80 some feet of derrick with a truck facing either direction under the ends. And off we went, quite slowly. Probably took us a good 20 minutes to get off the location and on the County Road, and even there we were only moving about 10mph.

You remember the section road with the grown-up windrow? It was dense enough that it completely obscured the highway patrol car that was parked on it. All I knew was that a very large Trooper came walking out of the shadows with his hand held up in that universal sign of "STOP!", shaking his head.

Hammer, on the CB: "Yo, Porky! Hold up!"

We creak to a stop.

Porky, on the CB:"What's up?"

As soon as we'd stopped, the troopers flat hand changed to a pointed finger, delivered with an emphatic shove back towards the location.

Hammer, on the company radio: "Ummmm... We gotta go back. Scooby (our truck pusher boss) you might want to come up here, Sanders (the trooper) doesn't look very happy right now!"

So Scooby buzzes up to the front by the trooper (still standing in the road 100' in front of me) and shoots me a shit-eating grin as he gets out of his pickup, and turns to take an butt-chewing that looked like it was being delivered by Gunny Hartman. I was afraid the shockwaves off of that gesticulating fingertip were going to blow out my front window.

We all had a good laugh, even though it screwed up our day. The crane guys were most of the way rigged down already, when we got stopped, and all the various pieces were now arriving on location out of sequence. All told, it probably added a half day to that.move. it was still worth it!
 
Since I'm sitting here bored, and have the computer out (way easier and quicker than doing this on the phone) here's another tale from days gone by.

This is early 90's. I was working for Phillips 66, hauling chemicals in the US and The Canada. Because our main job was delivering the odorant for natural gas and propane, we ran team, as that was a two-man job to do without any odor releases. This was one of the solvent runs we did to keep busy if we weren't hauling odorant. It was a gravy job: expense account, hourly pay, stayed in Holiday Inns. A nice private fleet job.

So one of the guys had moved the swinging bunk from the cabovers we'd had a few years prior, over into the 9300 which replaced them. These were sit-in sleeper trucks, so instead of the bed being at your hip, it was nearly at your shoulder when sitting in the seat. A pain to get into, but those motorcycle forks did eliminate a lot of vibration and bounce.

The only problem was, this particular driver smoked like a freight train, and never brushed his teeth. And he liked to roll his head out of the bunk to say "good mornin'!" His face was right at shoulder level with yours, and a foot away, when he did. Dragon breath would be being kind, I honestly believe he could have knocked the buzzards plumb off the shit wagon with that breath.

So we go to Odessa one night, and deliver right at 0600 like we always did. He drove the 5 hours down, I did the return trip. He asked me to wake him when Rush came on at 1100, which put us somewhere just south of Tulia, Tx when it was time to get him up. I-27 is flat as a pancake and straight as an arrow along that stretch, and the light bulb went on in my head.

The 9300's had M-11s in them, with the Pace system, which was one of the first cruise controls for trucks. Still a mechanical motor, just had a servo motor on the pump where the throttle linkage hooked up. This was still 55 days, so we were governed at 63 mph, and using all of it to get home. The bear reports were all clear, so I decided it was time to get Jim, and good.

Off came my seatbelt, crack open the door, gently slide off the seat and onto the running board. He was nearly deaf, so I knew if I didn't bounce or clank anything, he'd never hear me. Got myself positioned, reached in and knocked on the curtains to wake him up. (Heavy vinyl in those binders, might as well have smacking paneling.) When he swung his head out of the bunk, the only thing in the cab was my left forearm. And he wasn't real alert after a 3 hour nap after pulling a graveyard shift, so he never noticed that. All he knew was that the space the should have held Hammer was empty, and the truck was moving down the highway.

The look of sheer panic on his face, and his frantic attempt to vacate that swinging bunk, were beyond humorous. He was dang near kissing the shifter boot, still thrashing around trying to get his feet out of the bunk, when I slipped back in the door and into the seat. By the time he had his head higher than his ass, I was buckled in and cruising along like nothing had happened. He lit up a smoke in the pax seat and glared at me. And he couldn't help it, he just started laughing. "You SOB! You scared the shit out of me!"

"Who, me?" :yahoo:
 
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Since I'm sitting here bored, and have the computer out (way easier and quicker than doing this on the phone) here's another tale from days gone by.

This is early 90's. I was working for Phillips 66, hauling chemicals in the US and The Canada. Because our main job was delivering the odorant for natural gas and propane, we ran team, as that was a two-man job to do without any odor releases. This was one of the solvent runs we did to keep busy if we weren't hauling odorant. It was a gravy job: expense account, hourly pay, stayed in Holiday Inns. A nice private fleet job.

So one of the guys had moved the swinging bunk from the cabovers we'd had a few years prior, over into the 9300 which replaced them. These were sit-in sleeper trucks, so instead of the bed being at your hip, it was nearly at your shoulder when sitting in the seat. A pain to get into, but those motorcycle forks did eliminate a lot of vibration and bounce.

The only problem was, this particular driver smoked like a freight train, and never brushed his teeth. And he liked to roll his head out of the bunk to say "good mornin'!" His face was right at shoulder level with yours, and a foot away, when he did. Dragon breath would be being kind, I honestly believe he could have knocked the buzzards plumb off the **** wagon with that breath.

So we go to Odessa one night, and deliver right at 0600 like we always did. He drove the 5 hours down, I did the return trip. He asked me to wake him when Rush came on at 1100, which put us somewhere just south of Tulia, Tx when it was time to get him up. I-27 is flat as a pancake and straight as an arrow along that stretch, and the light bulb went on in my head.

The 9300's had M-11s in them, with the Pace system, which was one of the first cruise controls for trucks. Still a mechanical motor, just had a servo motor on the pump where the throttle linkage hooked up. This was still 55 days, so we were governed at 63 mph, and using all of it to get home. The bear reports were all clear, so I decided it was time to get Jim, and good.

Off came my seatbelt, crack open the door, gently slide off the seat and onto the running board. He was nearly deaf, so I knew if I didn't bounce or clank anything, he'd never hear me. Got myself positioned, reached in and knocked on the curtains to wake him up. (Heavy vinyl in those binders, might as well have smacking paneling.) When he swung his head out of the bunk, the only thing in the cab was my left forearm. And he wasn't real alert after a 3 hour nap after pulling a graveyard shift, so he never noticed that. All he knew was that the space the should have held Hammer was empty, and the truck was moving down the highway.

The look of sheer panic and his face, and his frantic attempt to vacate that swinging bunk, were beyond humorous. He was dang near kissing the shifter boot, still thrashing around trying to get his feet out of the bunk, when I slipped back in the door and into the seat. By the time he his head higher than his ass, I was buckled in and cruising along like nothing had happened. He lit up a smoke in the pax seat and glared at me. And he couldn't help it, he just started laughing. "You SOB! You scared the **** out of me!"

"Who, me?" :yahoo:
I thought you were Faegol at first but then I noticed you didn't use the word lashup.
 
Well, back in the Dakotas for a couple weeks, and of course an Arctic blast on the way.

Way too much corn still standing up here, way too much water in the rivers. Not going to be a fun spring the James River in Aberdeen completely out of its banks that's insane for this time of year.
 
Well, back in the Dakotas for a couple weeks, and of course an Arctic blast on the way.

Way too much corn still standing up here, way too much water in the rivers. Not going to be a fun spring the James River in Aberdeen completely out of its banks that's insane for this time of year.
Up around Oakes, there's a considerable amount of roads closed around the James River.
 

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