Truckin' Trip

This last Thursday Seth took me to work with him, and -not being very equipment savvy- I took a LOT of pictures, so I thought I'd give you all a running documentary of our day. Sit back and enjoy "Truckin' With Seth".

We left for Benson, MN at 6:30 a.m.

This is where they parked the rigs at Benson after dumping at Fibromen.

This is the grey tractor that we rode in. After arriving, we had to wait for the Dooley's Petroleum service to come and fuel the trucks. They came, and we were at last on our way to the job site.

Justin was in the truck ahead of us.

This is inside of the grey truck.

Uh -oh! Where's the key to the excavator? Once we got to Alexandria, Seth and I stopped at the John Deer dealership to pick up a couple keys. Then we made our way to the site where all of the equipment was waiting to be put into action! Boy was it muddy! This is Josh's shoe-print. Stepping in the mud was unavoidable. I was very glad that Luke let me borrow his mud boots! Josh was cleaning out the grinder getting it ready to go. Then he jumped in the excavator and started stacking brush piles. In the meantime Seth and Justin were working on backing up the trailer to the pile for loading. The telehandler saved the day by pulling the truck and trailer through the mud into place. Here's a short video of the process.

Seth was now able to start loading the chip trailer.

It takes special skill to load a truck the right way. (Ilike the way Seth bounces into the pile to load the bucket)

This is just so you know that I was really there.

The grinder was finally started and the woodchips started flying.

After the trucks were loaded, we drove back to Benson where we would dump at Fibromen which is pictured above.

We had to wait in line for a good forty-five minutes before we could cross the scale.

But we finally got through and went to our unload lane while we waited for an opening to dump.

This is where we parked while we waited.

Seth got his wood chip samples ready to give to one of the workers.

At last we were able to back the trailer in and get started dumping. This is inside Fibromen where the trucks dump.

Seth climbed into the trailer to get rid of a clump that was slowing up progress. The trailers are walking floor trailers which means that the floor of the trailers moves to unload the chips. Here's a video of it in action. I was impressed.

This is me watching again!

After dumping, we headed back to the site for another load. When we got there it was significantly warmer outside and we were in mud soup!

This is Justin un-suctioning his boots while getting into the telehandler.

The service truck received quite the mud bath.

Funny that I was the only one with mud boots and I was the only one that was completely useless! I offered piggy back rides, but nobody seemed to want one;o)

Justin in the telehandler and Josh on top. Towards the end of the day everyone was a little tired of swimming. They don't make very good ducks!

Seth picked the semi. I had mud boots on so I didn't even mind the ground, but I picked the service truck so I didn't feel left out.

After getting all of the trucks un-stuck and back on the road for the second time, we headed to Benson again for the last and final load of the day before going home. We made it home by 10:30 p.m. and were very glad to be out of the mud!