Just realized how much the view from the cab has changed

Was talking to a guy who's been running cranes since the 80s at the union hall in Pittsburgh last week. He said he never saw a computer screen in a cab until 2005, now he says half the job is reading data instead of feeling the load. It hit me different hearing him say he misses when you had to know your rigging by gut check. Anybody else feel like the new tech took some of the trade out of it?

2 comments

2 Comments

jana1195d ago

That crane guy from Pittsburgh nailed it. I remember running a Grove in the mid 2000s and the first load indicator felt like cheating, now you got cameras and dings going off constantly. It used to be you could tell by the way the cable hummed if you were getting close to capacity, now guys just stare at a screen and miss half the feel. Solidarity with that old timer for sure, nothing beats the gut check when the machine talks to you.

averywilliams5d ago

Man I don't know if it's that deep. I get the nostalgia for the old way but a screen telling you exactly what you're lifting is pretty hard to beat. I've seen too many close calls in my line of work to trust a gut feeling over a number. Those old timers are impressive but they also had way more accidents.