Beet Harvest Day 7 – Don’t Be Close to Trucks!

Morning Conditions:

Don’t Be Close to Trucks! Safety Meeting Yesterday Vs. Today

So, we’ve established that these truck drivers don’t need a CDL apparently to drive giant dump trucks with 62,000-110,000 pounds of beets.

Yesterday, our safety meeting started with a warning to not get close to trucks. Basically, if they’re driving or about to drive get the hell out of their way. 🚛 🚛

What happened? Well, apparently one truck driver was climbing on his cab to clean his windows. He fell off. Another truck ran over his legs. YIKES. No, thank you. 😥

Today, we learned about the shit show that happened during the last hour of our shift. We heard the basics from our awesome skidsteer guy who was listening to it all go down on the radio. But, this morning, we got details.

We knew there was a big problem, because a truck got stuck around 7pm and the foreman usually gets there within 5 minutes with the loader to pull it out. By 7:40, one of the night shift Ags came with the loader and pulled the guy out.

So apparently on another piler, a problem truck driver was, well, having a problem. He wasn’t paying attention and drove the side of his truck into the end dump.

Thus, he broke his fuel tank off the truck and spilled diesel everywhere. 😬

Not only did he break his tank off, he damaged the end dump of the piler. Mechanics were on it for awhile and managed to fix it somehow. 🤷‍♀️

4 Layers to 1 Layer to 2 layers

While the morning started cold enough to see our breath, by 11:30 we all shed layers like crazy. Today, I decided to wear my thrift store Scoby Doo t-shirt. One trucker commented on it and gave me a snickers bar. Too bad I don’t eat milk chocolate. But, two others on our team do!

After about 5-6 pm, the layers start to go back on. Once the sun dips over the beet pile on piler 5, thats the cue to change safety glasses and add a layer.

Cumulative Tiredness

This was the 4th 12-hour shift in a row and the cumulative tiredness is starting to kick in. All of us we starting to feel it right around 6pm today and pushed through.

Unfortunately, the night shift crew showed up late for us on top of it. While I’m sure they’re having a hard time flipping their circadian rhythms, we all wanted to be outta there at exactly 8. Instead, they sauntered in 5 minutes late.

Evening Conditions: