by Nick Drew | Tue 25 Nov 2014
Young operator is one to watch
So many of us learnt our operating skills by going to work with our fathers and getting the odd chance on the sticks during dinner breaks at the weekend, one young gun who is following that path is John Grainger, son of Always Diggings Neil Grainger.
9 year old John Grainger has been mad about diggers ever since he could walk and talk! Not surprising really when his dad runs a very successful mini digger business in the Camberley area. Young John started out from the age of 2 when he used to sit on the washer bottle in the back of his dad’s Takeuchi TB016 mini excavator, where he would watch and learn like so many of our generation previously.
John actually started to operate machines from the age of 4 and has never looked back since. John’s father Neil said, “John likes all types of plant and equipment, especially our Takeuchi’s and the little Bobcat we added to the fleet recently, but he is quite adamant that they must have Klac hitches, as pin locks just won’t do!”
When he is not on the diggers with his dad John likes to go out on a friends grab lorry travelling around to various sites and checking out the machines from the passenger’s seat. As one might expect john has a large collection of die cast models and some of the larger Bruder toy diggers
Back in the summer John attended the Lynch Open Day and had a go at the operator challenge contest, which he enjoyed very much. The only downside for John, was that he had to do it sat on his dad’s lap. John done well and the assembled audience enjoyed watching him, bursting into rapturous applause at the end of the test!
So far the biggest machine John has been on is a 21 tonne class Hitachi ZX210 which he thoroughly enjoyed. It’s clear to see that John is passionate about diggers and we all know that starting from a young age is without doubt the best way to learn. It’s just a shame that many youngsters don’t get to learn their skills from a young age anymore, in addition to the costs of obtaining a CPCS card, which is resulting in a massive skills shortage of good operators.
John is definitely one to watch for the future and I am sure he will go on to have a plant operating career and ultimately go on to run his father’s business in the future. Check out this video of John in action.
[youtube width="725" height="344"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o4ZNU0xYTo[/youtube]
The Digger Man Blog would like to point out that all works were carried out under the supervision of Neil Grainger.