You've got to see this loader operator

Clearly there's no OSHA. I was mesmerized watching him in the last half. I hope the video link works.
Loader driver

I watched real close, and he never once looked back when going in reverse. Not that he could have seen over the engine, but he never even attempted to look back.

Gene

heres the video
Untitled Audio Video
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The first thing I noticed is that the second he puts the key in, he's already putting the hammer down on that big diesel.

My second observation is, he'll probably be dropping bombs on us in 20 years. :shock:

Mirror on the right side of the cab.

I guarantee you if you watch 90% of the equipment operators out there, they never look back either. When your in a place like that kid is working, or on a site in the middle of nowhere, where no one is expected to be close, and anyone watching you work should know enough to keep out of the way, all looking back every time does is make you spend a lot of time looking over your shoulder. Yes, it should be done, but, like I said, watch 90% of the good, experienced operators, and I guarantee you will find they never even take a glance.

Working around big equipment since I was young that's one thing Dad taught me early on, DO NOT RELY ON THE OPERATOR TO LOOK OUT FOR YOU....The equipment is BIG, you are small (adult of child), so the true responsibility to stay out of the way of the equipment is entirely on you, regardless of what OSHA, MSHA, and any of the other regulatory bodies tell you how it should be in the legal sense. I've always looked at it like this, legal sense be dammed, I enjoy living too much to rely on anyone else to look out for me since the legal thing makes absolutely no difference to me if I'm 6 feet under.

That's one reason I've always taught my daughter, and the little boy I helped raise before I got married, to never get close to either the front or rear of any machine when it's in operation. Instead get ahead of, and off to the side of the machine and wave your arms or something to get the operators attention and be 100% sure the machine has stopped and the operator acknowledges your presence before even getting close to the machine.

I was running a T190 Bobcat the other night in the dark, so I couldn't have seen anything behind me wether I looked or not. So, when my daughter came down to get me, she did exactly what I had taught her to do, just as she has done many times before. Once I stopped and acknowledged her she came closer and the rest is history.

Web site also says he is driving a "digger".

neighbors amish kids regularly drive 6 or 8 horse hitch no safety stops and you are up against an unpredictable animal. it surprises me they dont get hurt and i have seen horses spook

I first saw that video a year or so ago. He is good for a small kid. Like some posted already he never looks back. The one time he hits something backing up if you watch close. He does do a good job feathering the dump. I have seen many adults that do not do better.

Now the sad part. You are seeing first hand why we are heading to becoming a second or third class economy in the world. What this kid is doing in Asia was not unheard of for many of us 40-50 year olds when we where young. Now if that kid's parents where in the USA they would be arrested and the kid taken away. That kid and his generation are going bury that same generation of the US kids. He knows how to work, most of the ones over here do not. It takes loader operators, common labors and ditch diggers to keep an economy going. We are not raising any of the above in this country now. The Mexicans will only fill that gap for so long.

So that video has a double meaning to me.

He has done this before LOL. Obviously he isn't the regular operator though or the station would be situated to his size. Wonder how old he is. I was doing stuff like this at about 12. Would guess he isn't much younger than that.

As far as looking back here are my thoughts. Familiar with the machine, familiar with the work area, not much need to look back. Anyone ever back a combine into a confined area? You can look back all you want you still have a HUGE blind spot.

jt

I have managed concrete,and block plants half of my life,and have done exactly what he is doing,this is not his first time.Plus making sure the corect material is in the right bin.Its more to it than operating the equiptment

jimmy

I'm 32 and I was loading gravel with the backhoe when I was in elementary school. Depends on where you are, but there are still kids learning to run stuff at a young age.

I don't see the future quite as negatively as you do. I was a high school physics teacher for 32 years and worked with all academic levels of students. We had 3 academic levels of physics, so we could do a nice job with all levels of students. Sure I saw some brain dead types, but I was always impressed with the great number of kids who were motivated and were learning to "think!". We have a great human resource in the US, and that is probably our most important resource, but our politicians and business leaders have not been kind to this group in the past decade and maybe even 2 decades.

I have 5 grandsons who are in various grades of elementary school, and I have taught all of them the basics of welding. They all have had some experience in driving tractors. Of course these skills will be improved with more time spent in each activity. I expect that all 5 and the 3 grand daughters will go on to college in some field of science or engineering, as all of their parents did.

I think if you spend some real time teaching our youth with appropriate patience (and that is probably not the way our fathers trained us!!), that you will have a much more positive picture of our future generation.

Our educational system, if it is managed correctly, will teach our kids to think, whereas the Oriental system teaches the kids to memorize. They may be able to pass tests based on memory, but they do not become good problem solvers. And thus we have thousands of Chinese coming to the US for college and grad school, and paying a high tuition fee.

Become a volunteer in your community, and help our youth experience something new that their parents are not able to provide. The rewards will be greater than what you give.

Have a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Paul in MN

puts a whole new meaning on the phrase, "sweat shop"

I taught high school math and physics for 20 years. Much of what you said, I agree with. However, our educational system is changing, and not for the better. Sadly, we are getting away from teaching kids how to think in favor of teaching to a set of "benchmarks" that will be on "the test." Towards the end of my teaching, about the only class that would allow students to truly think was FFA. I tried to get my students to think and try different approaches to various problems. But they had been so indoctrinated to want me to just spoon feed them how to work each and every type of problem.

I checked miles and miles of grade for some of the best motor grader operators in the country. You never want to get close behind a machine - those old guys would be shifting into high reverse before they'd ever look over their shoulder. They expected everyone to be smart enough to not be close behind them, and I guess we were because I'm still ticking. That was long before anyone ever thought of backup alarms.

Someone mentioned Amish kids - we have "tractor Amish" around here. A local Amishman has a Tandem dump truck cut down to pull behind a JD FWA farm tractor. About two years ago he had an 8 year old kid that would pull that rig down into the quarry, and they'd load it till it was running over, then he'd scratch all four wheels pulling up the incline to the scale. No brakes on the trailer, and wide open everywhere he went. All the haulers were ticked - they had to observe the legal limits, but this kid pulled out several tons overloaded every trip. I haven't seen that rig in a while - the law has started to crack down on them.

I agree with you Wayne. Some machines have rear view mirrors but you're too busy concentrating on the job you're doing. Clearing snow with a skid steer is about the worst. You can change direction in the blink of an eye and even faster on ice yet you still get some that try to sneak behind you. You try to look out for people but you don't catch all of them. You can tell who's been around equipment before though cause they always stop a ways back and wait till you acknowledge them.

My Dad was a logger owned his own mill, I cracked a sprocket on the skidding dozer in the woods(lots of rocks in the Catskills) and was told that I knew better! I was 8 at the time.

look close, there's mirrors on it...

I bet most of us here were running equipment at a young age.
That loader has many modern features that makes them very easy to operate. I still can't believe the loader controls have so much travel to work ?
Poor little guys arms are hardly long enough !

I was doing the same thing at his age except with a shovel and a wheel barrow!!

Rick