Chips, cookies, and almost a pancake

[Jeff]

Years ago I spent some time working in the woods. We were running 3 tree length skidders, a slasher and a total tree chipper. We would skid between the slasher and chipper, slash off the saw logs, then throw the rest over to the chipper.

We had to have a very large landing for this, and trying to keep tractors under trailers was impossible, so we were always dollying trailers down. The area we were in was sugar sand, so when you did dolly down, we would cut "cookies" for blocks under the landing gear. In case someone does not know a "cookie is a slice off the end of a log.

One of our loaded chip trailers was dollied in this manner on this day. It was an older trailor that when the air bled out of its system it lost its brakes rather then setting them. Well, it had lost its air, and when our driver tried to back under it it slid back on the cookies and settled down a couple inches, to where he could not get the tractor started underneath it again. So what we did was, have John pull along side the front so we could connect the air supply so we could charge the brakes. Pat and I then decided we would shovel out some of the sugar sand so the tractor could get under the trailer.

That put us under the front of the trailer, on our hands and knees scooping tracks in the sand. Suddenly I heard a noise, I lookes at Pat, he looked at me, and we both dove opposite ways. The noise we heard was the "cookies" cracking. the instant we rolled out, the trailer's landing gear was shoved straight in the ground, and the area where we were just a second before was now only about 6 inches high!

Pat and I still talk about that, how we looked at each other and both had that "Oh sh*t" look in our eyes.

[Tom]

It's amazing what we will do thinking that we are safe and have all the bases covered.  Youth doesn't see the obvious dangers....Air leaks...wrong grain in the cookie for a block...reaching under a heavy implement with our hands ( or heads).  

I suppose that is what growing up is all about.  (If you live through it, you grow up!)

I read this the other day on one of those "multiple fwds" that your friends send to your email when they can think of nothing original.

" Experience leads to the ability to make intelligent decisions, unfortunately, Experiences are the results of unintelligent decisions."

Now that is phrased to be funny but there is a lot of truth in it.  I spent most of my Sons childhoods trying to get them to slow down and question what they were doing before they did it, knowing I should have died a thousand deaths as a boy for being too quick.

I still have one who will push a button and say "what does this do?"

[sawguy21]

Had a similar experience. A semi fuel tanker was dollied on some makeshift blocks. It had just been refilled when one of the blocks broke. The trailer heeled over and the landing punchered the front compartrment, dumping 6000 litres of JetA on the ground right next to the Fraser River, Dep't of Fisheries and Oceans took a real dim view.
The trailer had been hastily blocked, there was no tripod under the pin, and no containment. Haste makes waste