Frustrated with guys who don't level their outriggers on soft ground

I pulled onto a site last Thursday and watched a guy set up on wet fill dirt. He kicked his pads in by hand, didn't bother with any cribbing, and was lifting a 12k AC unit. I told him he was asking for a tip-over and he just shrugged. Am I the only one who thinks basic leveling gets ignored way too much lately? How do you handle telling someone they're being unsafe without starting a fight?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_matthew2mo ago

Half the time it's less about pads and more about not checking the ground will even hold weight.

andrew_rodriguez1mo ago

Get out of here with that, @the_matthew is spitting straight facts. I've seen people stake down on what looks like solid ground but it's basically fairy dust holding up the top layer. Man, nothing beats that feeling of pulling a tent stake out by hand because there's ZERO resistance, then you realize you're basically camping on a dessert topping. It's even funnier when someone tries to hammer a stake into gravel and it just bounces right back out like a trampoline. Mother Nature loves to humble people who don't do the simple poke test first.

bettywood2mo ago

My buddy Mike set up his whole campsite last summer on what looked like solid dirt, but it was actually a thin crust over a soft spot. Woke up in the middle of the night to find his tent pole sinking sideways and his whole tent leaning like a tipsy shed. Took us an hour to dig the stakes out and move everything ten feet over.