Tired of the zero-deflection crowd on tandem picks

I read a comment last week saying any crane operator who lets the load swing more than an inch on a tandem lift doesn't belong on the radio. That rubbed me wrong. I've run tandem picks for 9 years around Houston, and the truth is, fighting the load with brakes and boom moves creates worse shock loads than a little controlled drift. My mentor, a guy with 30 years on lattice crawlers, always said a tight rig with a loose hand beats a stiff rig with a twitchy operator. Sure, you need discipline, but pretending you can stop 40 tons of concrete perfectly still in a 15 mph gust is fantasy. The real skill is knowing when to let the pendulum breathe and when to lock it down. Has anyone else found that a slight swing actually helps with spotting on blind picks, or am I just the sloppy one around here?

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kim.nina28d ago

Hell yeah, that pendulum breathing is real. Ive found a tiny bit of drift actually helps you feel where the load wants to go, then you can counter it smooth instead of jerking it around.

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