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Old timer at the yard said the hook speaks to you if you let it, and I almost brushed it off
I was standing by the coffee truck at a job site near Tacoma last Tuesday when an old operator named Dale started talking about hook feel. He said something like, "you can watch the load all day, but the hook tells you what's happening before your eyes catch up." At first I figured it was just old guy talk. But later that shift I was spotting a 12,000 pound steel beam and I quit staring at the load for a second and just watched the hook. The way it swung and tensed told me the rigging was about to shift before I saw any movement. I eased off the swing and it settled clean. I have been running cranes for 9 years and nobody ever put it that way to me. Makes me wonder what else gets lost when we rely too much on the load chart and not enough on feel. Has anyone else had an old timer drop a piece of advice that sounded like nonsense until you tried it?
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jamesf4115d ago
That line about the hook telling you before your eyes catch up really got me. I bet it's because your hands feel the sway through the controls way faster than your brain processes what you're seeing, so the hook is basically your nervous system talking to you. Weird to think some of the best safety tech we have is just paying attention to our own body instead of a screen.
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