LONG BEACH, California — Crane operators who belong to a powerful union and earn up to $250,000 a year transferring containers from ships to trucks are worsening the supply chain crisis that threatens Christmas by goofing off on the job, frustrated truckers told the Washington Examiner.
At my old job, we had a crane operator, and he had to work very closely with the guy in the tree (the crane was used in jobs with the biggest trees like 4+ feet diameter. and only removals, not regular pruning).
It was crazy watching them work together. Depending on the angles and lengths, the crane could only pick so much, like 3-5k lbs at a time. So the climber had to make good cuts, the crane operator had to be good at killing the motion of the dangling log (2 ton pendulum bad lol). Everyone just had to really know what they were doing or shit could go way sideways
It was all crazy skilled stuff that could turn dangerous any minute. Except I think this guy made like $23/hr tops, and he’d been at the company for at least 20 years.
He was funny, I learned he always bought his work boots at a rinky dink little independent shoe store that’s super close to where I live. It’s in a different city from where he lived, I have no idea why he chose it.
Obviously a different sort of crane than the kind to pick shipping containers. But craning, it ain’t easy