It's not every day that my work and hobby combine
- Thread starter Marky_24
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JOhnH
Ejection Handle Pulled
That's cooler than when I used to drive for Superior Trucking back in '70s. We hauled a lot of jet engines for GE. Some of those babies were huge and required escorts and bridge warnings. And they had speed and vibration detectors to assure a gentle ride. The air suspension helped, but still hitting that bump going over the Lake Pontchatrain Causeway could be the cause of an insurance claim. It wan't me; HONEST!
timwinters
Ejection Handle Pulled
Captain Obvious 
Captain Obvious
You see helicopters towed behind pickups all the time.
Saw a sad crash scene in the czech republic this summer. Someone was hauling an R44 with the tail overhanging his platform trailer. A tour bus couldn't stop in time and now had the tailboom and a main rotor blade stuck through the windshield.
Fiveslide
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Fiveslide
View attachment 78341 Today I got to haul an AS 350 to a movie studio in Hollywood. First time in 17 years of driving truck that I have hauled an aircraft.
You both are lucky. I had a reefer trailer. Most interesting thing I got to do with it was deliver in a cave.
There is, or used to be, a guy there you could pay about $35 to back your trailer in for you if you were scared. I told him no, I would be ok. I did it, came back out and asked him how many suckers he got a day because there is less room to back into parking at most truck stops in the country. That cave seemed massive compared to some places I backed into just to walk inside and pee.
JOhnH
Ejection Handle Pulled
It might have been big, but backing into a dark cave would give me the shivers.
One of my worst days driving was one of my first solo trips. I was delivering culverts to a Budweiser construction site. I had to drive about a mile down a narrow temporary dirt road where they unloaded the culverts with some large Cat gear. Then I realized there was no place to turnaround and I had to back down that whole damn road. Other drivers had a good chuckle at my expense because I had to stop and pull forward to straighten out about a hundred times. At least I didn't slide off the road.
Boy, that was over 40 years ago and seems like a whole different life. Today I would happily pay that guy the $35. The best thing about that driving job was that I did it between quarters at college to earn enough money to go back to school without taking out student loans. And the job gave me all the incentive I needed to be sure to go back and finish school. Thermodynamics seemed easy after that.
Gerhardt
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Gerhardt
Working at Wal-Mart during college did the same for me.
JOhnH
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That is certainly understandable.
Fiveslide
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Fiveslide
Again, it was better lit than a large percentage of truck stops. It literally took me triple or quadruple the time to back into a spot at the flying J the night before.
Sometimes I think I go backwards better than I do forwards.
Bill
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For me it was the part time gig at McDonalds all through highschool...
Skip Miller
Final Approach
@Fiveslide Who did the $35 man work for? Did he have, or did his employer have insurance to cover this if it didn't go well? I wouldn't turn my rig over to anyone without...
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JOhnH
Ejection Handle Pulled
I was thinking the exact same thing.
10! shifts at McDonalds should be the answer to any millenial whiner who goes on about his student loans.
Palmpilot
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I hope the ventilation is good in there!
Marky_24
Pre-Flight
Yeah I still had about 60,000 lbs left in my "useful load"
Fiveslide
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You dropped the trailer and he used a yard truck. I wouldn't have given him my Classic XL either. I think he operated like a lumper, similar to those you have to use at some places like NY. Those a-holes at Hunt's point co-op make big dollars, and you can't not use them.
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
Funny how that works, isn't it.??
All through high school all I wanted was out and go to work. I did not want to take anymore classes for anything. Until I learned that minimum wage is a starting point, not a living.
Ted
The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
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iFlyNothing
When I worked at the meatball improper truck transport along with preservation exceedance (going too long between running the engines or re-preservations) were the two biggest things we got on an almost daily basis.
The truck one the biggest issue was that they either wouldn't use an air ride truck or an air ride trailer. I never understood how this happened so often since it was universal along all our engine lines.
Kenny Phillips
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Kenny Phillips
If you think the engines were huge back then, look at the specs of today's GE90-115B and GE9X engines. Larger than my first apartment.
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jsstevens
My dad provided summer jobs and return to school motivation for several college aged kids of friends while he was an electrical contractor. A summer of crawling in attics, under houses and digging ditches was most persuasive.
JOhnH
Ejection Handle Pulled
After posting, I realized I incorrectly called them jet engines. Actually they were turbines to be used in hydro-electric dams.