by Nick Drew | Tue 10 Dec 2013
“Duck” Dilemmas – When wheeled excavator work goes wrong
It’s been a while since I posted any accident shots on the blog, so I have delved back into the Digger Man Blog archives for a few bad day at the office moments, this time focusing on “rubber ducks”.
Laughing at other peoples misfortunes, added with a generous helping of mickey taking is essentially a very British thing to do! The accident and mishap photos have always been a popular feature during the past 5 years of my blog, and with that in mind it gives me great pleasure to present a few more in this post. The operator of this Atlas machine was definitely having a bad day as the machine fell into a large hole whilst he was attempting a lift!
I snapped this shot of a guy in a JCB JS130W getting in a spot of bother during the A30 Improvement works in Cornwall some years ago. He was spinning his wheels at the time, which caused him to sink down further, grounding out his dozer blade which then acted as an un-intentional anchor during his attempt to get free.
This unidentified wheeled excavator proved that not all ducks can float on water, in fact this one went on to perform a turtle impression as it lies upside down after slipping in off the river bank!
This Caterpillar M318 is not looking too good in a boggy quagmire either. One has to wonder why people deploy these machines in such bad ground conditions, when quite clearly a tracked machine would be more suited. As with most things in life, its horses for courses.
I can’t quite work out what happened to the O&K wheeled excavator in this shot sent in by an anonymous reader. Unless there was a big hole beneath the water that he has driven into tipping the machine over on its side?
Finally in this batch of “duck” horrors a couple of shots, courtesy of our friends at Bouwmachine Forum, that we featured on the old blog some years ago now. This Volvo EW160B has clearly slipped off a barge on a job in Holland, crashing into the canal wall cab-side with devastating effect, in what must have been a very frightening experience for the operator concerned.
Accidents will always happen sadly it’s a fact of life, so please take care out there on site especially as we are so close to Christmas.