Has This Happened To You?

[BillyCement]

What are some of the annoying things that contractors do that drive you nuts? Here are a few of mine:
1. They take my entire hose off the truck just to wash their tools or boots.
2. When they are guiding me while backing into the job site they'll say "OK driver, that's good.", and I'll stop and throw on the air brakes. Then they wait until I'm out of the truck to say "Could you back up a few more inches?". Like I need another reason to climb in and out of the cab.
3. They wait until I'm completely washed down and have the chutes put away to ask for another wheelbarrow full.

I'm sure many of you can think of some more...................

[gant]

I hate it when I'm the last truck on this certain job, the pump laborer takes my hose everytime and starts washing the pump truck up right there on site before I get to go wash up..and he ends up getting concrete from the pump all over my truck.. and the SOB ran me out of water once... ever since then after I give him 50 gallons thats it.. after he gets his 50 gallons i go bleed off my tank and get in the truck..

also i hate it when the unroll my whole hose to wash stuff up and then just hang the damn nozzle on my ladder and walk away..

[slumpy]

The one thing that i hate is when they pull off my chutes in a middle of a pour and throw them facing up in the hot sun to bake

[slumpy]

And i hate when they order 8yrds and you bring back 5

[BillyCement]

Yeah, when you end up bringing back about 5 yards the contractor always says "Well, I didn't want to run short so I ordered a little extra.". Thanks....now I have to deal with your idiocy.

[slumpy]

Or how about when contractors order 6 sack limestone with 2% chloride and a 4'' slump when its 90 degrees out and sunny to pour a drive way or something doesn't make any sence to me

[BillyCement]

I went to a customer today who was doing a driveway. It was on a hill so he wanted it very stiff. I mixed it up to about a 4 inch slump and he said "OK, that looks good.". I climbed back in the cab and proceeded to pour about another half a yard and he said "Hey driver.....could you add a little more water?". Never fails. (I drive a rear discharge mixer so you have to add water from the rear of the truck.)

[gant]

most of the time when that happens I tell them the water valve is back there.. I'll hold it to the floor.. but usually if the person working the chute wants to put water in it, they stop me and give me the "drinking" sign and I rev it up..

[BillyCement]

We have a few customers who know enough to add the water themselves. I wish more of them would do it.

[gant]

but i had one idiot laborer come to use my hose and turned the valve on thinking it was turning the hose on.. almost ruined my load.. he got an ass eatin over that

[BillyCement]

Yeah, that happened to me, too. The guy threw the valve open thinking it was for the water hose. He put about 40 gallons into a one yard delivery. It was the mason, not the laborer. I laughed when I realized what had happened. The mason was pissed but what could he say? He was (and still is) a non-tipper so I really enjoyed it. ;D

[slumpy]

Or how when they order crete at 4 in the morning or those midnight pours in the dark i really hate doing those

[gant]

we've been pouring at 3 am 3-4 days a week for the last 2 weeks with no end in sight lol.. next week on tuesday and wednesday we have a 900 yard pour starting at 2am.. i was on the job at 3 am this morning.. I dont mind early work but what pisses me off is we get there at 2 am to do all these big jobs but dont get off work till after noon.. they need to hire a couple part timers to help us out.. I'm at 52 hours already this week and still have all day tomorrow..

[db2179]

billycement nailed it with those three. This is one that I hate the most we go to a job and head in to a long drive way only to get in there and he says you needed to back in. why could'nt you tell dispatch that and they could put it on the ticket. I learnd real quick if i can't tell, call dispatch and have them call him or back in.

[BillyCement]

How about when the homeowner stands and watches you back into their driveway and after you get out of the cab they say "Excuse me......I have to get my car out of the garage.".

[db2179]

I hate that to. even worse is when you get in to a job that was a challege and the contractors trucks are it the way they sould no better. Another one is on a night pour they put up there portable lights and there shining in your mirrors and you can't see squat.

[gant]

we run into the work lights problem quite a bit.. or I hate it when I tell them I cant get my truck in there.. and the contractor is like " i took my pickup through there"

[BillyCement]

Whenever we called our previous dispatcher because we couldn't find the job he would say "We had a truck there this morning.". Well, how does that help me?

[concretejoe]

I hate pouring on the highway with traffic speeeding by just inches from you and the contractor having no regard for your safety. We had a job last year just like that. I knew from the word go that someone was going to get killed. Sure enough, one of the foremen on the jobsite ended up running over one of the laborers in his pick up. That ain't all, there were a number of injuries. One of our drivers cut a laborers fingers clean off. The guy was reaching up to flip over the flip chute as the driver stepped out on his fender and flipped it over. He was an illegal, so the contractor told the man that if he said that it happened on the job when he went to the hospital that they were going to strand his a** and not pay the hotel bill. They also made him report for work the next day. Man, you gotta love illegal labor.

[BillyCement]

Just went to a homeowner today with three yards. He's a builder doing work on an addition on his own home. The house had to have been at least 8000 sq. ft. (and he's adding on!). He just built a two car garage in his back yard that I would love to live in. His in-ground pool doesn't look like a pool. It looks like a natural pond that's always been there. Beautiful landscaping. I squeezed my truck into his back yard and poured a slab for his new hot tub. Then I moved the truck a half dozen times filling in holes to support his new deck. When it came time to pay the bill he started singing the blues about how he's making less money today than he did 20 years ago. Then he handed me a check for the exact amount of the bill and didn't even say "Thanks for your help, driver." I thought for sure I was getting a $20 out of it. Nothing. Over the years I've come to realize that the guy who gets his hands dirty is the one who's gonna give you a nice tip. Not some guy wearing LL Bean khakis who stands there and watches everyone else do the work.

[Mort]

My favorite are "nodders." Guys who run the chute that the only signals they give are head nods and fists. So head nods mean move forward and discharge. The fist means stop the truck, stop the drum, and lock the chute.

Another good one: guys that leave you with a full chute and nowhere to scrape down. I stopped this dude (language barrier, and it wasn't Spanish) short, and he wouldn't scrape, he wanted me to keep discharging. I swung the chute over, put what was in there on a tarp, and washed out. The customer was pissed, but it was his guy that did it.

I guess its true what they say: You either finish high school, or you finish concrete.

[slumpy]

i really hate when your pouring a driveway and every is standing in the way of your chutes and when you hit them they look at all pissed off. get the hell out of my so i can do my job i would like to say or when you got 3 guys telling you 3 different things to do one says stop the other says keep pouring and the other guy is telling me were to put my chutes

[BillyCement]

Slumpy, that happens to me a lot. One guy says stop and the other guy says keep pouring. That's when I stop and tell them to pick one guy to give me signals. I have to laugh when I see that the same things happen to mixer drivers all over the country.

[cfconcrete]

Helping to push a few (dozen) wheelbarrows full of mud for a homeowner for his patio behind his house, about 200 feet from the closest spot I could squeeze the truck, and not getting a cold soda, or a freaking tip. Now I'm not expecting a tip, or looking to make a few extra $$$ on account of kissing a customers ass, but Jeez, I didn't hafta get outa the rig ya know! Every time it happens to me I swear to God that I'm never gonna help again, but I always feel like I should get out and help the poor bastards, (I'm a sorry sap) even if to stretch my legs. Next time I'll sit my fat ass in the cab chomping on my big bucket of KFC.
AND! I really hafta laugh when the Joe Cool job foreman is giving me one hand signal to stop the pour, and his laborer is telling me to pour, and the job super is pointing where he wants the chutes, while the other laborer is spraying himself in the face with my hose cause the nozzle is stuck on. F-Me!
Drive Safe Men...

[gant]

the other day on this big job we're on I was in the cab pouring a duct bank and trying to watch the laboror with the chutes and the damn concrete inspector stood right at my rear fender in the way.. normally i'm a calm cool person, but this was after he used my hose and threw it on the ground and I didnt see it and ended up running it over so I was already mad about that.. I honked and he didnt do anything and I honked again.. after that I stopped the drum set the brakes and hopped out and went unglued on his ass.. he still wont talk to me lol he will get enough to take slump and air and fill his cylinders and walk off.. wont even use my hose he waits for the next truck

[junior]

i hate it when your out of the truck and run your load back and they say "it'll work" then u get in the truck and look in the mirror and they want more water. we have a regular that will do it ever time just to piss us off

[vaupell]

* Biatching to the driver about wrong consistence or wrong concrete mix
* Unpackeing the conveyer, unload alittle, repack, move unpack 3-4 times.
* Having a bad attitide from the moment you hit the construction site.
* the one and only "know it all" and "it used to be like ****"
* Police - tickets for not using seatbelt, or spills on road
* batchmasters who think they are the one and only gift to the industri.
* idiots walking OR driveing right out infront of a highspeed moveing truck.


But then again, if its a problem to move my truck several times, i would be
working in the wrong buisness. since my conveyer only have 13meters reach
and a telesope for 2½meters and only around 260degress of pouring radius.

[Ideal Driver]

How about going to a job and ya got one guy with a wheelbarrow unloading 9 yards of mud.

Here in Iowa we do alot of jobs out on gravel roads. I know Iowa is a lil bit slow on trends but a few years ago all the gravel road got 911 addresses. Why is it so difficult to get an address at some of these places. I get directions like-

Go down the hiway til ya hit come to a rock pile turn right, go about two thirds a mile past the red barn that used to be blue turn left, go about two miles passed the house where the dog will come runnin after your truck and make another right, it will be the third house after ya pass the pond that dried up back in 99.......HUH??

The crazy thing is though I usually find them without gettin lost.

[BillyCement]

barnett127 said:

How about going to a job and ya got one guy with a wheelbarrow unloading 9 yards of mud.

Here in Iowa we do alot of jobs out on gravel roads. I know Iowa is a lil bit slow on trends but a few years ago all the gravel road got 911 addresses. Why is it so difficult to get an address at some of these places. I get directions like-

Go down the hiway til ya hit come to a rock pile turn right, go about two thirds a mile past the red barn that used to be blue turn left, go about two miles passed the house where the dog will come runnin after your truck and make another right, it will be the third house after ya pass the pond that dried up back in 99.......HUH??

The crazy thing is though I usually find them without gettin lost.

That's pretty funny! Our old boss used to tell us to "make a left (or whatever) at Larry Martin's Restaurant". Trouble was it hadn't been called Larry Martin's in about 30 years. New guys would always pass it up. There were other "landmarks" he'd come up with, too. "Take the bridge over Molly Ann's Brook". Whaaat? They called it Molly Ann's Brook during the Depression. Now it's nothing but a dried up creek that fills only when it rains. "Go straight up Gatey's Hill". Gatey's Hill? Apparently it was called Gatey's Hill before there was an actual paved street going up over it. He knew where every street in the county was but he hadn't been out driving them in quite a few years.

[Mort]

^^^ Stuff like that makes me glad we have numbered streets here. Problem is, in some areas the NE, NW, SW, and SE get screwy, and the St., Ave., Pl., Ln., Way., and that gets in the way. I'd still prefer that to all named streets, at least you know when you're getting close.