MGI wrote:I remember doing a job topsoil stripping & reinstatement a few years back up in Yorkshire, it was a 48" steel pipeline for Yorkshire Water, AMEC were the main contractors and we subbed the strip & replace off them. The job started right next to Selby golf club and we were the first company to start using any sort of regimental plant (the fencers only had a couple of tractors and trailors and a fence post basher) It was at the time of the miners strike and the plant hire compamies in the area were in a desperate position. We hired the D8 equivalent Komatsu which was a 455 or something similar, it weighed in at 55 tons with the blade. It was absolutely brand new, the tracks were still yellow and the manager of Short Bros Barnsley depot came out with the machine to give us the once over. He was a big bloke (not fat - just big) He was ramrod straight and very direct we started calling him the Major, he seemed ex military. Strange thing was, his son was driving the machine and he was just the opposite to his old man, covered from head to foot in tattoos, skin headed, huge boots with external steel toecaps and ear rings. his trousers finished about a foot off his ankles! We christened him 'Tokyo Joe' The fitter told us he was the 'hardest' bloke in Barnsley and used to fight pikeys for money! Having said that he was a good operator and when we moved on we took him with us (on our own Cat 245) We got the Komatsu for £15.00 an hour when the going rate had been double that prior to the strike! The job went all the way to the other side of Barnsley and we had to strip a mile a day! Trouble was we kept catching up with the fencers! We had two 360's with blades pulling the first section out, then we had three D6's pushing the spoil as far as they effectively could and then we had Tokyo Joe shoving the rest of the way, one of the D6 drivers was bald and we called him 'Harry the Haircut'. He was another driver we took with us when we moved to the next job (Oxford)) Another later addition to the squad was a diminutive guy who stayed with us for years, we called him 'Danger mouse' he was always on about the fights he got into (all 5'5'' of him). Fantastic crack on that job!
Hi MGI
Had the crack with Tokyo Joe today
I read this thread when you put it up but was not 100% sure it was John,
I worked with him on Scrapers at VHE also went to the same school not seen him for about ten years
Was on a VHE site today in the snap cabin and in walked John and some other old skins best crack at breaktime they have had for years
Slasher needed a 16g to shift the muck and blaggard to get the boys back to work
regards
D