This happened to me years ago at Paguwa, Canada. Gravity feed...out of the question. The camouflaged 12X12 well was very deep and only a little of the L track kept it from going a lot deeper
Absolutely scares the pants off you when the ground disappears from under you......
Yeh...Anyone else have a scary moment or two.
Lucky Guy Hal.....that could have been far worse for both you and the dozer ! Reminds me of doing mobile attack on grass fires up in the gold rush country , where you never know where you could walk or drive into an old mine shaft. The funniest I ever heard was one of my coworkers turning a Model 5 CDF engine around in the cemetery and had the duals go in to some poor stiffs concrete lined grave ....big OPPS!
The other one was another co-worker who drove over a Christy box with county "City engine" and the duals went through the box and there he sat... but he tied to drive out and snapped the axle...big No-No- !
My Pucker moment was at Camp Roberts with a Deuce and a half Fire engine set up as a Brush Engine . I was exploring the back roads and took a shale road that made a left turn to know where from a wash out ...had to back down on a side hill.... I almost got out and left it there ...I wasn't sure if I should let the water out so it wasn't top heavy or leave it in for added traction.... I oppted to leave it in and seriously said a lot of prayers backing it down. I also had an "Oh !@#%" moment doing Mop up after a fire on one of the old WWII firing range areas when I almost drove over a pile of Mortar shells that were left there back in 194?.... turned out they were WWII era training dummies , but I didn't know that !
You think that was a mistake?
He was just finding the smallest footprint so he could park it on the street in Rome.
My grandfather Cole ran dozers before hydrolics and then later my dad ran them clearing right of way for transmission lines for the power company.
He had several near misses but the most annoying was when he drove his Mack accross a gulley they had built a road in enough to get to several towers and the trailer leaned,and those big chains snapped like toothpicks,letting the dozer just roll over and over down the hill.Bent it's exhaust pipe and it took another D6 to flip it and they drove it back out and back on the trailer.All after quiting time and before the weekend.No over time pay.oops.
Dan, my oldest brother had Army basic training at Camp Roberts in 1943. He's still doing good.
My son's old Army buddy from Camp Roberts. A nice 1942 Chev. G506. I wonder if your brother ever rode in this one Ralph?
Could be, John. After crawling through mud and muck at Camp Roberts, he told his next younger brother to avoid the Army, so said brother joined the Navy right out of high school.
Camp Roberts is a lovely place to work , as is Shandon in the summer when it's 118 in the shade for 3 days in a row ! LOL! Rick, I bet somewhere out there in the multitude of buildings is your brothers graffiti some where !
Dan, but it's a dry heat! Most fun is running a harvester in the summer heat as I did as a youth in Creston. Then I got to drive the grain truck to the grainery and shovel the 5 tons of grain out the little holes in the truck floor! No AC in those days. Ah Paso Robles.
One of my scariest moments was when driving on a 2 lane road in northern California. It was a state highway and I had the right of way. The side roads all had stop signs. I was going along about 65 (not in a T) when I saw a car coming from my left. They had a stop sign, but didn't look like they would stop. They were going very fast. I didn't have enough space to stop, so I gave it the gas and the other car passed behind us by about an inch!
Norm
Try crossing the Mackinaw Bridge with 50 mph crosswinds on a Goldwing....it tightens every orifice God gave you ~~
Here's a bulldozer story.
A friend of mine in Minnesota was driving a D8 Cat on frozen swamp(around 20 feet or more of loon crap) in November when it was not frozen very deep. I think about a foot. He was being followed by another tracked tractor.
After a while he looked back and didn't see the other one following, so he stopped, got off and walked back on his trail leaving his tractor running.
He helped with the trouble the follow-up crew was having and they continued on after some time.
When the got to where he'd left the D8 it had broken through the frozen marshgrass, loon crap and whatever.
They had to leave for a few days.
So they got a big pole tent like a T-pee and erected on the site.
Next they built a fire and made sure two guys stayed there at all times to keep it going to thaw the stuff above the Cat.
They got a deep sea mud diver from St.Paul to wiggle down in the mud with a log chain.
The first thing he found was the draw bar.
He connected the chain and they pulled him back up.
The Three poles were on heavy platforms on the frozen tundra which by that time was getting pretty thick. They connected a winch and pulled the dozer up out of the soft mud.
There was no paint left on it as the bird crap acid had eaten the paint off.
They got it running in another day's work and drove it out.
That was in the early 60's.
Oh, one of the crew asked the diver how it was down there, His repl,"you wiggle down in 10 feet of mud, close you eyes real tight and you will see how dark it is down there"!
In the early 80's the Fire Marshall was the chief deity at Camp Roberts. A friend of mine had the job of cutting fire breaks there and was on a 9U D6. One day he came upon an encampment in the middle of war games. They told him that he could NOT be in the area and he had to leave. He argued and the brass in the encampment got on the horn. In no time at all a pickup showed up and educated the troops. As my friend fired the Cat back up and as he took off he was given the signal to "drop the blade" and ripped through all the comm wires that had been run across the ground by the encampment. His boss sat in the pickup laughing....