Gear cable snapped mid-lift on a 50 ton Grove in Houston last Tuesday

I was hoisting a HVAC unit onto a 4 story building when the swing gear cable just let go... the load started drifting sideways about 15 feet before I could brake. Had to set it down on a gravel lot instead of the roof pad, took 3 hours to re-route a spare cable and get the unit back up. Has anyone else had a cable failure during a critical pick like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

simonp4026d ago

Oh man, that's a rough Monday. Cable snapped? That's not a fun way to find out your gear needs a prayer before every lift. I'm guessing the gravel lot wasn't too happy about getting a HVAC unit dropped on it either. At least you didn't have a crowd watching you try to explain why the unit is suddenly 15 feet off target. Hope the spare cable held up better than the last one.

noah_barnes26d ago

Geez, that's a solid point about the crowd factor. Idk for me, the worst part about a public fail like that is the silence right after. Like, that moment when everyone's just staring and nobody knows what to say, and you're just standing there holding a controller that's now useless. I bet the spare cable worked fine just because the original one was probably one bad luck cable in a batch of a hundred.