Elizabeth’s cousin Steve decided to expand his RV dealership. He purchased the property next door. It had an existing building that did not meet his needs. So, he made plans to tear it down. Lucky for me, we were in town for some time. I volunteered my time to assist him.
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| On a lunch break. |
My primary tasking was to remove all the copper pipe and wire so Steve could recoup some of his cost for the scrap metals.
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| Riding Moon Buggy Mk III, Pulling out the wires |
He also asked me to tear down some internal walls and to strip the inside of the perimeter (structural) walls to expedite the process. He was going to have the concrete in the building crushed to use as fill vice having to pay to have it hauled off. The best part for me was that he tossed me the keys to his skid steer loader to make my task go quicker.
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| Ripping down the walls |
Up to this point I had probably one hour of seat time on a skid steer. I had five minutes in Yokosuka, Japan, when I managed the installation of a child’s playground. Back in 2001, my father-in-law, Wade, brought his skid steer to our house to help landscape. I had about five minutes there as Wade was a master at driving his, and all I was doing was wasting time. My third seat time was when we visited Elizabeth’s cousin Warren in Ohio. He was trying to wrap some large hay bales and moving between two machines. I thought I could expedite his process by running the skid steer. Warren accepted my offer and was very patient with me. He could rotate the bales and align them in a few seconds. It took me about two minutes to get the same job done. As that was just about the same time that the bale wrapping took, I was barely keeping up.
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| Pulling cables with the 236D |
Back to the building tear down...It is not often that someone tosses the keys to their EXPENSIVE motorized machine to me and tells me to “have fun” with it. So while I was enrolled in Steve’s Self-Paced School of Heavy Equipment Operation I probably got 30 hours of seat time. So I would call myself a novice operator. I was able to drive the unit without having to concentrate on how to move the joysticks, but I did have to think on how to use the thumb control that operated the jaws on the bucket.
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| Steve supervising the next stage. |
I didn't get a photo of the trailer full of copper but Steve told me that he got about $6k for it!!! Copper prices are high. I see why people are motived to get it.
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| One flat building. |
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