What's the biggest thing you ever wrecked?

[swede]

I worked summers at Bergstrom Paper Company in Neenah when I was in college. (FWIW-Fuzzy Thurston's kid worked there also. Nice guy.) We were always buzzing around the place in giant fork lifts.

One blazing hot day everyone was having a bad day at the office with breakdowns and whatnot so the foreman--who already pissed about something else--screamed at me to start feeding stock pulp into the beater under the finish end of the paper machine.

While I was busy with my back turned, a crew of about 10 millwrights were moving in behind me carefully rolling in a giant shaft that functioned as a kind of main axle in the high-speed paper rewinder. With the foreman's screaming still ringing in my ears I jumped onto the fork lift and threw it into reverse in order to get a fresh load of pulp stock. Oh yeah...I backed right into a 20 foot long rewind shaft specially designed and manufactured to spin at high rpm without vibrating. It was so screwed up they had to put the old shaft back in. Cost the company about $20,000 to get another new one. There went my shot at employee-of-the-month.

So...anyone here ever burn down a garage or sink a nice big boat? It would make me feel better to know that someone out there has done more damage to things than me.

[SkinBasket]

I haven't, but my brother turned a dump truck on it's side a few years back. It takes a some heavy equipment to pull one of those back onto it's wheels. He switched to semi driving after that.

My wife deals with employment law, so I get to hear stories about people fucking up all the time and costing their companies 10s and 100s of thousands of dollars. Don't worry man, you are definitely not alone.

[Patler]

I worked summers at Bergstrom Paper Company in Neenah when I was in college. (FWIW-Fuzzy Thurston's kid worked there also. Nice guy.) We were always buzzing around the place in giant fork lifts.

One blazing hot day everyone was having a bad day at the office with breakdowns and whatnot so the foreman--who already pissed about something else--screamed at me to start feeding stock pulp into the beater under the finish end of the paper machine.

While I was busy with my back turned, a crew of about 10 millwrights were moving in behind me carefully rolling in a giant shaft that functioned as a kind of main axle in the high-speed paper rewinder. With the foreman's screaming still ringing in my ears I jumped onto the fork lift and threw it into reverse in order to get a fresh load of pulp stock. Oh yeah...I backed right into a 20 foot long rewind shaft specially designed and manufactured to spin at high rpm without vibrating. It was so screwed up they had to put the old shaft back in. Cost the company about $20,000 to get another new one. There went my shot at employee-of-the-month.

So...anyone here ever burn down a garage or sink a nice big boat? It would make me feel better to know that someone out there has done more damage to things than me.

Must have been a long time ago if a take-up spool for a rewinder only cost $20,000!

[sheepshead]

My Marriage...

[Harlan Huckleby]

So...anyone here ever burn down a garage or sink a nice big boat?.

I came close to destroying a ship, probably killing about 300 people aboard. Close, no cigar. I misread a pressure meter in an engine room, fucker wasn't too far from blowing up.

The next item far down on my list of achievements falls all the way to my dad's 72 Mercury. Not a terribly interesting story, just a fender bender on an icy hill with a stop sign at the bottom. My dad arrived at the scene of the accident and screamed at me. That man should have been a 911 phone operator.

[hoosier]

I crashed and burnt a plane. It was a German Messerschmidt that my aunt got me for Xmas at the local hobby shop. The plastic gave off a thick, smelly cloud of smoke and lots of little sticky fibers as it burned.

[oregonpackfan]

I wrecked both the family station wagon and my SAT scores on the same morning.

On a cold, icy December Saturday morning, I was headed to take my SAT's in the family car. My car was stopped at a four way stop intersection. A car came barreling up behind me and couldn't stop in time on the icy roads. She plowed into the back of my car.

We exchanged drivers license and phone #'s and I headed off to the test center.

Though the accident clearly was not my fault, I was overwhelmed with guilt(the result probably from attending a Catholic grade school with strict nuns! :)

My SAT scores came back poor though I was still accepted by Marquette and Madison.

[LL2]

I was working for a rental car company. I damaged a rental car and got one of the trucks used for towing cars stuck in a car wash and damaged a front tire. That jobs wasn't my calling.

[MadtownPacker]

I was doing 55-60 on a road outside of town at night when some drunk bitch in a Mercury TOpaz reversed out of her driveway right in front of me. I tried to swerve around her and actually made the truck lean up on 2 wheels before it slid into the car. Like always the drunk didnt get hurt just me when my head smash the front windshield.

http://www.lmctruck.com/assets/customer-pictures2/bzc90-gmc-larry-m-ma.jpg

[swede]

Cost the company about $20,000 to get another new one. There went my shot at employee-of-the-month.

Must have been a long time ago if a take-up spool for a rewinder only cost $20,000!

This happened around 1979. The "good" foreman called me into his office a few days later and went through the exercise of rubbing my face in it. For whatever reason I came out of his office thinking the cost was in the $20 k range.

I'm just glad the damage was limited to the company's bottom line and no one was hurt.

That paper mill was a dangerous place and was only a tiny bit safer when I left manufacturing for good in 1980. It's one thing when Tom and Jerry have trouble with an anvil. Huge things were spinning, cutting, pressing, stamping, and grinding away at maniac speeds in the paper mill, and the machines were mercilessly oblivious to something soft and human getting in the way.

What would a rewind spool cost these days Patler?

[Freak Out]

I've never destroyed/crashed anything myself but I've destroyed some serious shit for Uncle Sam while in the Military.

[Iron Mike]

I've never destroyed/crashed anything myself but I've destroyed some serious shit for Uncle Sam while in the Military.

<==flashes back to summers at Ft. Hood, where the 49th Armored Division/ Texas National Guard Unit used to show up for training and wreck just about every piece of equipment that they had.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/images/49ar-div.gif

[Harlan Huckleby]

I crashed and burnt a plane.

wow!


It was a German Messerschmidt that my aunt got me for Xmas at the local hobby shop.

:evil: I blew up tons of tanks and forts with my plastic army men. The carnage was incredible.

[Patler]

This happened around 1979. The "good" foreman called me into his office a few days later and went through the exercise of rubbing my face in it. For whatever reason I came out of his office thinking the cost was in the $20 k range.

I'm just glad the damage was limited to the company's bottom line and no one was hurt.

That paper mill was a dangerous place and was only a tiny bit safer when I left manufacturing for good in 1980. It's one thing when Tom and Jerry have trouble with an anvil. Huge things were spinning, cutting, pressing, stamping, and grinding away at maniac speeds in the paper mill, and the machines were mercilessly oblivious to something soft and human getting in the way.

What would a rewind spool cost these days Patler?

I don't know about today, it has been a long time since I was in a papermill myself, but I think it would have been a lot more even 15-20 years ago for a 240" spool.

You are very right, a papermill is one those places where injuries can be of the horrendous types, and death can occur in the blink of an eye. The risk is when workers become complacent.

[Badgerinmaine]

I crashed and burnt a plane. It was a German Messerschmidt that my aunt got me for Xmas at the local hobby shop. The plastic gave off a thick, smelly cloud of smoke and lots of little sticky fibers as it burned.
Did Snoopy shoot it down? :P

[]{ilr]3]

I did tree work all through my 20's. Several Times I had the opportunity to drop large trees onto houses that were to be bull dozed. Most of these houses where located on prime real estate on the local lakes and the houses were 10 times nicer & larger than what I was currently living in. :crazy:

To my dismay I was never able to really crush a house as most of the houses were 2 story and the tree never picked up enough speed on its way down to do much damage.

I cleaned up after several storms though on Ranch style houses where large limbs had come down in storms and gone completely through to the basement, a ford pickup that was crushed from front to back straight down the middle to the ground and a brand new Cadillac that was parked next to a tree that was struck my lightning and fried all the electronics and blew out 2 of the tires. And my personal favorite, a very large ash tree on the local golf course next to the #9 green near the club house was struck by lightning. The tree just exploded when the moister trapped in the frost cracks in the tree was vaporized. A 14 foot wide and 3 foot deep crater was left with a good chunk of the trunk still standing like a tooth pick. 500lb chunks of the trunk were blown over 25 feet away! :shock:

Lighting is Wicked Cool! :worship:

[]{ilr]3]

So...anyone here ever burn down a garage or sink a nice big boat? It would make me feel better to know that someone out there has done more damage to things than me.

Oh Yeah, I almost forgot. When I was about 8 years old I was teaching the little 5 year old down the street to play with matches in the old wooden barn on some hay.

I Started the Barn on Fire. It was a big fire.

The little boys dad was the towns fire Chief!

I think we moved to anouther town about 3 weeks later. Not sure why :?:

[swede]

{ilr]3]


So...anyone here ever burn down a garage or sink a nice big boat? It would make me feel better to know that someone out there has done more damage to things than me.

Oh Yeah, I almost forgot. When I was about 8 years old I was teaching the little 5 year old down the street to play with matches in the old wooden barn on some hay.

I Started the Barn on Fire. It was a big fire.

The little boys dad was the towns fire Chief!

I think we moved to anouther town about 3 weeks later. Not sure why :?:

That story reminded me of this opening from a really cool book for big kids, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever", by Barbara Robinson:

The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls)and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker's old broken-down toolhouse.

The toolhouse burned right down to the ground and I think that surprised the Herdman's. They set fire to things all the time, but that was the first time they managed to burn down a whole building.

Knowing that you burnt down an entire barn must must fill you with complex feelings of wonder, shame, and pride.

[MJZiggy]

I once made a typo and made a payout for $10,000 to the wrong company. Client wouldn't give the money back either. I was not cut out for data entry.

There's also the time like a day or two after I got my license that I was pulling into a driveway oh-so-slowly to avoid the car that was waiting to pull out and I went so slow I didn't realize that I actually did make contact and scratched the whole side of his car--that was a week old. The other driver didn't even want my insurance information...never figured that one out.

[MateoInMex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqHYGzQDe2w&feature=related

When I was a young tart with no direction, my cousin Enrique got me a job at an insulation company. Insulation sucks worse than laying tie-bar for anyone who's worked construction before.

Anyway, Enrique and I were the only ones who were bi-lingual, and I was the only one with a driver's license. So my first day on the job, I was driving a big insulation truck...I don't know how big it was, nor do I know if I needed a CDL. Probably. So our first job that day was approx. a 2 hour drive. I was getting the feel drivin' my big rig, but unfortunately....Driving on the freeway doesn't teach you shit about backing up in reverse. Let alone in a cul-de-sac with a fucked-up curvy driveway and pine trees on both sides.

I laugh about it now, but boy did I feel like crap when I backed that bad boy right into the brand new garage addition on a 3-story home that hadn't even been insulated yet. Whatever trussells and beams that came down didn't harm my rig..but the builders who had to take the next 2 days re-doing the work had some choice words for us working on the job site.

Who knows how much it cost to fix that house. The good news is I was OKAY even though I was in never in any danger.

[swede]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqHYGzQDe2w&feature=related


Who knows how much it cost to fix that house. The good news is I was OKAY even though I was in never in any danger.

I don't know why, but the picture in my mind of you hopping out of the truck after the last swinging rafter had crashed to the ground made me laugh. That had to be a long walk to the back of the truck.

[MateoInMex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqHYGzQDe2w&feature=related


Who knows how much it cost to fix that house. The good news is I was OKAY even though I was in never in any danger.

I don't know why, but the picture in my mind of you hopping out of the truck after the last swinging rafter had crashed to the ground made me laugh. That had to be a long walk to the back of the truck.

LOL. I liked this thread Swede, this brings back memories. The walk back was excruciating. I wanted to stay in that thing, but I had to help out my cousing pick up 2 rolls of insulation that had fallen off when I put it back in D and drove forward.

I've been called things before, but wow...I'll say that was some of the most vicious language I've ever heard. We ended up seeing that foreman dick again too, but we got out before the owners were scheduled to look at the progress of that house.

Big mud tire tracks leading right up to the garage with a bunch of wood beams and shit all over....lol.