Steve is understandably miffed by being awakened by a garbage truck at oh-dark-thirty. I don’t blame him for a minute, and I’m extremely pleased our garbageman is lazy and never shows at our house until after eleven.

As for the beepers, I understand the need for those all too well.
IN the early 80’s, when I was working at Inland, I would park in a 200 acre lot and walk in through the east gate, then across the first rolling mill, past continuous cast, through the bloomer, through the stripper, and into the Coke plant. I did this every day, as did a lot of people. THis was just before beepers on trucks, and I witnessed why- at least in our area.

The mill was loud and dirty, and you had to be on your toes because there was a good deal of dangerous shit going down. The odds of getting hit or run over were great, and it happened a lot. I’d say, twice a month someone got creamed by a big forklift carrying a coil. Or sometimes, a Euclid.
euclid.jpg
A euclid is a big truck, and we had lots of them, delivering hot slag from the blast furnaces to the lakefront, where it got dumped, enlarging the Inland domain year after year. They didn’t go too fast, but that much truck, even going at 20 mph, was a force to be reckoned with.

And they didn’t have backup beepers.

One day a woman who worked in our area stopped showing up for work. It wasn’t a big deal, but she was a single woman who needed the job, and wasn’t skilled to do much else, she was a clerk in the toolroom.

As part of my apprenticeship, I had to spend time in mobile shop, working on the big trucks, and cranes, and lots of other things. As a result, I have knowledge of how to operate a great deal of heavy equipment. We often had to do brakes on the big euclids because stopping 270 tons of iron and slag was no mean feat, and it took a couple of days of intense labor for two or three men just to get the tires off. Anyway, we had one in the shop, needing brakes, and as we took the outer of the dual rear tires off, we found the toolroom clerk. She’d been backed over, and squeezed up in between the huge tires. By that time, several weeks later, she was a gummy bundle of crushed bones and rotting flesh, the sight and smell of which made me retch for some time.

Plant photographers came out and took pictures, and her family was contacted, and she was cremated, there being hardly enough to bury.

The tires were steamed and cleaned and put back on. In the noise of the mill she never heard the truck, and i can only hope she got it fast. It appeared she had. Anyway, for the next month, we went around installing backup sirens on every piece of equipment in the mill. I had a polaroid of the woman, and anyone who beefed, I showed them that picture.

As far as garbage trucks go, ther’es a man standing on the back of the4 thing, most of the time, why do we need a beeper too? Why can’t we train garbagemen sufficiently so that they’ll yell or push an emergency stop button when the driver starts backing up over something/someone? I know, some areas only have one garbageman per truck, which is grossly inefficient. Get two guys on there and be done with it, and take off the damned beeper. Let Steve sleep, futhuchrissakes.