That morning on the Mississippi where I hit a submerged car frame

We were working a channel near Baton Rouge last month when my cutterhead slammed into something solid. Turned out it was an old sedan frame buried in the silt, bent three teeth on my cutterhead before I could shut down. Had to pull the whole assembly and replace them, which ate up six hours of my shift. Anybody else hit weird debris like that and have a go-to for getting back online faster?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantp281mo ago

Man that's a heck of a way to start a shift... six hours down the drain just from some old car frame hiding in the mud. I've had similar bad luck with submerged logs and concrete chunks on the Ohio River, always seems to hit right when you're making good time too. Bent a whole set of teeth last year on what looked like a chunk of rebar sticking out of the bank, took forever to get the spare parts swapped in. Hope your cutterhead didn't take any permanent damage from it.

williamb291mo ago

That old car frame probably sat there for decades without bothering anyone, and then picks the worst possible moment to reveal itself. Reminds me of a time back in '92 when we were digging a foundation near an old mill pond and hit an entire buried rowboat, must have been down there since the 1920s. Took us a whole afternoon just to figure out what we'd snagged on, and the backhoe bucket had a nasty gash that needed welding before we could finish the job.

lopez.jana29d ago

I don't know, isn't that kind of the job though? Six hours on a snagged cutterhead beats six hours of paperwork or sitting in meetings any day. At least you're out there actually doing something real, not just pushing paper.