Excavator stuck!

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Diesel nut

ArboristSite Operative
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The cornfields of Iowa
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This is how it looked when we started on Monday afternoon. We brought dads dozer down to help and all it wanted to do was sink like the vator so we came up with another plan. Got a few big cables and started pulling on her and she started sinking even more. We ended up cutting a bunch of logs and shoving them under the tracks to help keep it from sinking more but they weren't big enough. So by the end of the day this is what it looked like...
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dang thats sucks and now how are you goin to get it out now.
 
While that is certainy stuck, I have seen worse. Few years back a larger machine broke through while crossing a peat bog to dig out a skidsteer that had suck nearly fifteen feet below the ground. Had the hoe in deep enough that the top of the cab was even with the sod. Took a couple of dozers a week of moving dirt to build a road out too it, then a few heavy duty wreckers hooked together while chained off to the dozers started winching. It was like trying to pull a boot out of the mud with all the suction. Finally got it after rolling the machine end over end. I don't even want to know what the tow bill was. The real kicker is they guy got another smaller piece stuck in the same bog later that year...:msp_w00t:
 
Ouch, that's tough. We had one in a peat bog 3 yrs. ago,had to build a corduroy rd. to it so the other excavator could dig it out. Then hooked on to it with excavator and a forwarder to get it out.
 
On Tuesday we decided we to build a road out of railroad ties and logs to drive on to get to the stuck machine. We found about 200 junk railroad ties the local elevator said we could have so we laid them down and now we have a road about 20' wide and 75' long to get to the stuck vator. Then we started in on cutting up some real big logs..bigger than what we could handle by hand so the guy that owns the excavator rented another one just like it and we cut down about 13 cottonwoods. Ended up with about eight or nine logs. Most of them were 26-34" in diameter 16' long. So now we had something to set the rented vator on next to the buried one to start digging it out. So we got her dug out part way and then shoved about three logs under the tracks and then started pullin. We ended up getting it out but wow what a job. Finally got it out at 11:30 this morning. There's more pics of this but my sisters the one who took 'em so I'll have to get them on here soon. :)
 
While that is certainy stuck, I have seen worse. Few years back a larger machine broke through while crossing a peat bog to dig out a skidsteer that had suck nearly fifteen feet below the ground. Had the hoe in deep enough that the top of the cab was even with the sod. Took a couple of dozers a week of moving dirt to build a road out too it, then a few heavy duty wreckers hooked together while chained off to the dozers started winching.

We though about getting a wrecker out there but the owner of the company said all he would do is get stuck like us and it wouldn't work. The problem we had was there was so much ground around that area that was super soft. It was mostly silt and sand. This was down on the river bottom and we've had several floods so it isn't in the best of shape. This was a job the DNR hired us to do near the Des Moines river. We were trying to dig out a ditch that had silted in. They said the ditch was 10 ft deep but it filled up with silt and the culverts that drained into it were full too.
 
Sometimes if you can find a LARGE stump uphill from where you are and if you have a really heavy cable or chains you can extend your boom all the way out and hook tight and then retract the boom and usually you can pull the hoes out that way with their own power either way looks like a mess. Glad you got her out.
 
Nice!! On gettin it out that is! It's amazing how much suction that gets created after the machine sits in the soup for awhile. You win, I ain't ever buried one that bad....yet :D
 
A co-worker buried a 200 Komatsu while digging a pond. he reached down a 12 foot slope to smooth out a bump that would have been 10 feet under water when it was filled. Machine slipped down the slope and there he sat. Anything you tried to do with the boom was fruitless, it just sank in. We had all of our dozers out there ( 4 of them) and couldn't pull it up that slope, it just dug in, until finally, there was too much suction and it wouldn't move.
We couldn't get another larger excavator out there until the next day, so the guy who got it stuck was put on pump watch over night to keep water down. He fell asleep. Pumps had run out of gas several hours ago. Woke up to water over the turntable, and up to the seat height on the operator's seat.. Machine was running, so we turned the turbo up but that was to no avail. We shut the machine down and let it drown.
We still had the cables hooked to it. We had a 330 Cat to dig the front end out and we dragged the now dead hoe to dry ground.
Ironically, the company had a salesman out that very day to figure out the value of that 200 on a trade-in. In the end, the owner got more for it from his insurance company than he would have gotten on trade when it was in good shape!
This was the second machine that same operator had buried! And last! lol
Ted
 
Normally the machine would have been able pull itself out, but this time of year when the frost is just out, its tougher. It looks like in the first photo, you would have been able to latch a hook from a heavy chain onto the machines track. And then put the other end of the chain onto something solid, like a tree stump or dozer. Then drive the machines track forward, causing the chain to pull the machine towards the other end of the chain, and itself from the mud. This normally works as long as the chain is heavy enough, because its nearly impossible to stop a machines track from moving altogether. Good luck
 
A co-worker buried a 200 Komatsu while digging a pond. he reached down a 12 foot slope to smooth out a bump that would have been 10 feet under water when it was filled. Machine slipped down the slope and there he sat. Anything you tried to do with the boom was fruitless, it just sank in. We had all of our dozers out there ( 4 of them) and couldn't pull it up that slope, it just dug in, until finally, there was too much suction and it wouldn't move.
We couldn't get another larger excavator out there until the next day, so the guy who got it stuck was put on pump watch over night to keep water down. He fell asleep. Pumps had run out of gas several hours ago. Woke up to water over the turntable, and up to the seat height on the operator's seat.. Machine was running, so we turned the turbo up but that was to no avail. We shut the machine down and let it drown.
We still had the cables hooked to it. We had a 330 Cat to dig the front end out and we dragged the now dead hoe to dry ground.
Ironically, the company had a salesman out that very day to figure out the value of that 200 on a trade-in. In the end, the owner got more for it from his insurance company than he would have gotten on trade when it was in good shape!
This was the second machine that same operator had buried! And last! lol
Ted

Talk about sliding/falling into things... My dad used to work at a stone quarry. The pit was 2 levels, the old part was 221 ft and the newer part was only 93ft. Around the outside of the pit they piled all the dirt that they scraped off the bedrock.

One of the pit-truck operators was hauling dirt up to the top one day and dumping it. He got a bit close to the edge of the dirt pile and began sliding down the pile towards the edge of the pit. It slid right down and off the edge of the pit, turning over in the air. It landed at the bottom of the newer, shallow pit top down.

The truck was similar to this
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I still can't believe that after falling upside down 93 feet into the pit that the cab protected the operator enough that he had no life-threatening injuries... that guy was very lucky to be alive.

Not so lucky was that was the first AND last time that guy had an accident at that quarry. He was let go promptly.


On a related note, one day my dad accidentally ran over the bosses car with the yard loader and he didn't get fired. He worked there 22 years.
 
We do a lot of heavy machinery work in wet, mucky, peaty areas so a about 5 years ago we cabled together a bunch of 4x6 oak posts so that we have a mat about 16'x 10'. We made 5 of them so when someone realizes they are in it good we go for the mats right away, this usually keeps us from getting in to deep. If you are far out in it you can pull the mats from behind you and swing them around and lay them in front. Works pretty well.
 
seen it before you got to dig a ramp to the tracks ( with another machine) and break the suction then hook low and pull.
 
Thanks for the reps fellas. It was an interesting experience for sure. It's a PC 200 model for anyone who wanted to know. The guy that owns this vator is a fella we farm with. He is no stranger to getting stuck. This is the first time he has had this thing stuck this bad. I've seen his combine and tractors get stuck but not that bad. You definitely test out the cables and chains and usually break em a time or two. Lots of work but sometimes it's fun. :)
 
We do a lot of heavy machinery work in wet, mucky, peaty areas so a about 5 years ago we cabled together a bunch of 4x6 oak posts so that we have a mat about 16'x 10'. We made 5 of them so when someone realizes they are in it good we go for the mats right away, this usually keeps us from getting in to deep. If you are far out in it you can pull the mats from behind you and swing them around and lay them in front. Works pretty well.

I totally agree with this. Our mats were built a little different. Each mat was around 4 ft long and 14 ft wide, made of treated 12 by 12's with hooks so you could pick em up and swing em.
We had a job a few years ago, laying cable across a swamp of around 40 acres. We used mats to stay on top of the goop, and never went down. It is kinda hairy though, making sure the next mat you place isn't too far away, and not so close you are on top of all of the mats you have out there! lol
Ted
 
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