Where the F*<k did the truck go?!

[spark and bark]

Had a pretty good one on monday. Rolled up on our job. A little restring on a highway. Only about a mile and a quarter long. All we had to do was hook up the wire and pull in the wire. Ropes were in the week before. The rope machine we have is a f350 with a flatbed and 4 drums mounted on it. The rope was a half inch samson hollow braid(10 grand for all four drums i was told). Well, i was looking up checking the ropes making sure we didnt mess up and tramp anything, and the other lineman said "HEY where THE FU$K IS THE PULLIN' TRUCK??!!" Well, sure as hell, somebody cut our ropes and stole the damn truck! And i dont live in los angeles, i live in north idaho! Well, we called the cops and did our own little redneck csi, and followed the dually tracks to an empty lot. Sure as hell, there was the truck. We thought for sure it would be somewhere getting stripped! The only thing they took was a pintle hitch, fire extinguishers, first aid and body fluid kit, and a cb radio with GPS in it. Truck was fine, and still pulled in center and the neutral that day.

Long story short- always grip or tie off your rope! Never know whats gonna happen over the weekend.

[hotwiretamer]

Damn, we have had Batteries, battery cables, and gas stolen but never the whole freakin truck!! Luckily they didn't damage the truck to bad or set it on fire or something!
Sounds like you will be having a new policy heading your way about leaving equipment on jobsites!!

[spark and bark]

yeah i wouldn't doubt the co op decides to go to pole mounted spider line. We have the little rope truck that we use for 1/o or smaller, and a 5/8's line for bigger than 1/0. the bigger rope is usually pulled in with the smaller, so it gets wore out a little faster. crappy part is that the rope is less than 2 years old and has to have splices in it. so i guess watch your ass. you never know what could happen!

[HIVOLTS]

We were rebuilding a substation way up in the country and kept a little service bucket locked up in the sub over the weekend. We left the keys in the cabinet of the feeder breaker. When we come back to work, after a while I noticed the truck was missing. I told my partner. "Hey, the truck is gone!" We worked in that little-biddie sub half a day before we realized it. It was hot wired as the keys were still in the breaker, which saved our butts. They found it months later on a tip from a mad girl friend. It had been stripped down, took the bucket and boom off it.
We had kids break into our truck barn and take one for a joy ride before.

[230kv_barehand]

I hate pole mounted spider wire! Would much rather use a truck or have the company buy a 4-drum puller to pull by trailer.

[hotwiretamer]

We have a TSE 4 drum puller that we can use on the trailer, or hang it on the pole. The Hydraulic lines are about 40' long. It comes in handy on occasion but usually we can leave it on the trailer. We replaced the rope on it about a year ago, and it is already time to reverse it. I wish we had replaced the rope with the same type that was on it. We had "Gator" rope on it originally. The rope that it is on it now is junk. The company balks on wanting to change the rope out so soon. The "Gator" rope lasted about 8 years! The problem being is that for 4 miles of Gator rope your looking at about 8 grand.

[Rammstein]

Lazy people will still anything they can if they think they can make a buck off it. Where I used to work we were not allowed to leave the keys in anything at any time. Before I started they had a truck with an air compressor hooked to the back stole at the county courthouse. Someone got mad in court took off jumped in the truck where they were working and drove off.

[230kv_barehand]

Having 1, 2, or three show ups on a big Highline job you just assume a missing truck in one leads to it being used somewhere else.
One of our 1963 model EXHUME Diggers mounted on an old on an old gas International tandem truck wasn't in the wire end show up one morning and two days later the Kansas Highway Patrol call the company to tell us where we could recover it after it was towed of of I-70 after being there for 24 hours. To this day we don't know if it was some hitch hiking traveler, or someone that just stole the truck, and drover it west until the freshly filled 50 gallon tank ran dry, but that was one slow rough riding old truck to hijack.

Thats funny right there. Imagine being the dumbass that stole it!