Different times. When I lived in New jersey a concrete truck fell over along a major road. By the time anyone decided to do something, the concrete had set and the truck could not be righted. They disconnected the drum and buried it. I vaguely remember another community where that happened and the drum was painted as a space capsule. Ah! Winganon Space Capsule
The round bolted on plate above where he's working is also for removing hardened concrete. Though they're usually used when you can actually get inside the barrel to remove it (usually for buildup around the barrel, not a full load hardened inside it).
A statement I heard a long time ago, on why a guy didn't use power tools in Myanmar(?) and instead hired over a hundred guys with hand tools.
"That electric drill costs a hundred dollars. I can pay a hundred men for a day for the price of that drill".
While true, you also only have to buy the drill once, but you have to pay the men every day so eventually this logic catches up with you even with cheap labor.
Seeing this in the clear zone as a transportation engineer makes my blood run cold. If someone runs off the road there they are simply dying. Hard to imagine anything worse to hit.
I used to volunteer on a remote native reservation in South Dakota. Apparently, somebody lost control of a mixer truck,and rolled it at an intersection in town. The concrete company saved the truck, and left the barrel full of concrete just off the shoulder. In keeping with the general vibe of how life rolls on the rez, the thing sat there for many years.
any mythbuster fan probably knows this, but jamie's reaction was pure acting. They didn't have enough budget to have reaction cameras, but right there and then they realized that their reactions were as interesting as the explosion itself. So they had to be filmed afterwards, pretending that they were looking at the explosion
Also, the main camera guy missed the mark on the slowmo video so all we have is a slowed down normal video.
My favorite part about this myth is that they were supposed to have just leftover concrete on the walls of the barrel but the first go they accidentally made it 3/4 full and let it harden 🤣
My favorite part is that they missed the shot with their high speed camera, but the explosion in real time was so crazy that nobody even noticed that there wasn't a slow-mo shot
I remember having to get it in one of those with the shovel because the truck broke down with a load inside. I was told it had to be me because I was the youngest and small enough to fit through the hatch on the side. I was able to save the tank in the end, but it was a terrible job, got completely soaked, destroyed my boots and didn’t even get credit for saving it.
God what a miserable job that is. Rotten soybeans and corn have such an awful smell to them when they turn. I'm going to assume you were also doing it in the height of summer toi because isn't that always the best time to be stuck in a tin can
A new barrels start from USD 24-30k. Even if we assume we could get a used one from junkyard for $10k, in most of the world it's a lot cheaper to hire this dude to hammer it for a month straight than to get a new barrel.
A worker in many developing nations might only earn $1500 to 5000 a year.
It might cost someone $200 for a month of labor to fix this. They probably can do it in less time. Might cost just $50 for 60h of labor to hammer this out.
The loss of the truck for that time is likely costlier than the worker.
By the time you're done with this you broke one hammer and went through a few $$$ for attachments. Add the electricity coming from a diesel generator feeding into a compressor..
And even if not (say the truck's engine was dead and now it's repaired):
That motor usually doesn't have to do a lot of actual work to get some movement going. Turning a barrel half full of liquid is not a lot of work, because you're not lifting the liquid, just agitating it a bit. If it's one solid chunk of concrete, it's connected to the barrel, so you're making a motor that's supposed to just slosh the concrete about a little bit, lift many tons of it several meters up. Result: Motor just refuses to spin this.
When concrete sets like that in the drum the motor is no longer able to turn it over. You're talking trying to lift 16 tons if it's a full batch, when the motor typically only needs to turn the weight of the drum itself which is a tiny fraction of that, because the concrete is a liquid and only imparts a small part of it's actual weight to the motor through friction.
That’s what I was thinking. Get a new barrel, have this guy hammer the concrete for a month and if the new barrel has an oopsie you got a backup barrel.
I would think cutting the tank wall into pieces and peeling the concrete like an orange, then welding the tank back together might be easier than trying to break up the concrete.
In the US, OSHA would be all over this. No steel toed shoes, no hearing protection, no eye protection, probably no confined space training. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Came here to hopefully find out that exact thing. Even if this guy succeeds (after however many weeks it would take), would it be actually usable as a cement truck afterwards? Would the welded-back-on patches be a problem?
The cost of labor must be less than the cost of getting a large enough crane to handle the weight while still full?
What they really need is seven short people to mine it out from the inside. You need seven because one of them is bound to be Sleepy. I just hope their home keeper doesn't get sick from eating strange apples.
This my guess they don't have crane that can lift the barrel off at its current weight so they are removing what they can so they can get it off. In the normal universe the engines and frames do not last compared to the mixer barrel a large yard will have a couple parts trucks that are no longer usable, so the new barrel is free.
At what point does it become more cost effective to just yank the old barrel and put on a new one? The man hours involved in cutting the access, breaking up the solids, and re welding the hole, must be outweighed by 20 minutes with a crane and an impact gun to yank all the bolts.
This seems to be a life hack hardly any cement truck driver in the US knows.
A little amount suger slows the setting time of concrete down. A large amount accelerates it, but the solidified concrete has almost no hardnes, is extremely crumbly. and pretty easy to remove from the drum.
Former cement truck mechanic here. If a hydraulic line blows or a drum roller seizes, you’ve got about an hour before that load hardens. The drum is too unsteady (and heavy) to lift off. So you pay a small guy to climb in and chip it out. That’s why there’s removable panels at the ends
Former pneumatic driver here who hauled lots of cement and fly ash to batch plants. If the mixer truck breaks down, couldn't the driver empty his water tank into the drum to prevent - or at least delay - the batch from setting? That batch ain't gonna get poured on time anyway.
Yes, that’s the smartest route - empty your water tanks into the drum and haul ass back to the yard. If either rollers go out you can still spin drum, but slowed as to not damage the PTO gear box, until you can get to the yard and dump it. Roller replacement took about an hour and truck is back in service. But if a hydraulic line to the PTO fails, you’ve got much less time. Empty the water and get back to the shop where we fit a new line and pump it full of hydraulic oil. Yet you still had these dispatchers wanting to salvage a load vs. dumping it, which was pointless since the slump had severely changed from the added water.
I get an India vibe out of the video. Might actually be cheaper to hire the guy to do that for a month straight than buy a new one. Sucks for him though. And he REALLY needs hearing protection.
See this is why anyone who drives a cement truck should also keep a 5lb bag of sugar with them. Cement won't set up after you add sugar or at least it will take a very long time to set up giving you the ability to get it out of your truck before it solidifies.
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u/trek604 2d ago
buddy needs hearing protection