by Nick Drew | Tue 22 Sep 2015
Motorway masterclass memories
Looking back at an old post from the Contract Journal period of the blog, today we go back in time to 1974 when as a young 12 year old lad, I used to accompany my Father on his 3 year tour of duty on hire to John Laing during construction of the M27 south coast motorway between Southampton and Portsmouth.
As I recall I never missed a Saturday or Sunday during that time and the experience I gained as a result was quite simply irreplaceable. Like so many of us of that era, during my time on site I got to try out so many different machines and in my opinion it was during these formative years that I gained a lot of experience, which held me in good stead for later years.
On many occasions I was put to work loading topsoil into onsite trucks using one of Laing's Hymac 580C's or my Fathers JCB 3CII, but for me the biggest highlight was pushing the tip over with a rope controlled Caterpillar D9G, the sheer power of these awesome machines has stayed in my memory ever since.
The main muck shifter on this contract was M.C. Pierce who ran a large fleet of motor scrapers including Cat 627's & Terex TS24's which were helped by Cat D9G's with pusher blades.
Also on hand were a couple of D8H's coupled to 463 box scrapers, after this contract I never saw Mickey Pierce's machinery again, does anyone know what happened to this firm?
Of course these days the health & safety rules simply do not allow any youngsters on site and in my opinion this situation has lead to the severe lack of skilled operators available today.