What it looks like to see $100,000 fall.

[porkchop]

So for anyone that cares and hasn't figured it out I took a job with a touring company as an electrician. They brought me on at the end of the tour to learn the show in English so that life will be easier when I go to South America with them. I'm sure you'll hear plenty about that in the months to come. Well this years tour was 48 cities in 27 states. And they had yet to have any problems with crates falling over when loading/unloading our semis... then we got to College Station, TX.

It's our last stop and what do you know load in our local crew is about as effective as jungle camo in the arctic and the show crew is busting it to get it all done ourselves. A ramp doesn't get places properly and what do you know we lose a wardrobe crate off the side of the ramp, the door latch breaks, not good but nothing too scary we just need to pay more attention when loading and unloading right?

Then we get to load out. One important fact this is an ice show and this facility doesn't have ice normally. That's fine we bring in an ice truck and they make us a rink. There is a 6 inch hose that circulates coolant from the truck to the rink and back. A piece of the grate for the drainage system is taken out so that they can run this hose and we can still get our crates in and out of the building. They put a big orange cone by the hole and there we no problems with in loading in. Come load out day two of our locals (refer to previous comment about quality of work) are pushing two double stacked crates of lights. That's a total of 8 Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200 and what do you know they find our trusty hole and the first double stack topples over and my boss goes postal. The locals holding the remained double stack stop paying attention to it and what do you know just as we get the first two crates upright the second stack hits the dirt. To add insult to injury one of the locals decided to try and catch the top crate and keep it from hitting the ground. Sounds like a good idea but he decided to use his head to catch the crate, not a good idea. I was amazed my boss didn't dismiss all the locals at that point, but he might as well have because they didn't really touch any crates after this point.

As for the lights we were trying to get the crap out of the sweltering heat so we marked all of them that had dropped and they will be very carefully inspected this week for damage. Overall this day was just terrible we had one of the lights fall off it's stand (about two feet off the ice). An assistant props guy got hit pretty good with a crate coming down a ramp, had to hold the house because one of the projectors wouldn't play nice. Yah happy to be out of that place, very very unlucky place for us.

So I guess this is moral time:

1. Know what obstacles you have in the way when moving things
2. Don't move more than you can control
3. If your hiring help get to know what they can/will do and don't hold them accountable for more than that
4. If you are in charge and something goes wrong keep your temper to prevent escalating the situation.
5. Don't catch falling object with your head.

 

[len]

I don't like double stacking stuff until it's in the truck. Safer that way. Unless the cases have full depth wheel cups so the case frames are almost touching. Like the cyberlight cases. The newer cases the cup wells are only about 1" deep and don't really do much other than guide the wheels into position.

 

[porkchop]

Well given that we have about 30 light crates and none of them are particularly light it's not really a viable idea not to stack them with a forklift outside of the truck. In the beginning I agreed with you on the wheel holes but after seeing these thing get pushed around all day with the tractor I have new faith in the "shallow" wheel holes

 

[derekleffew]

Here's what the major tours do at my venue: One fork takes the double stack off the truck and another fork unstacks them before they go into the venue, OR, one fork unstacks them directly from the truck. VL5/6 and 2416 plastic boxes can be stacked 3 high in a truck. M2K boxes don't have wheel cups, so donuts are used.

More and more tours are using pre-hung auto-truss, or Swing-Wing. I've yet to see Upstaging's HUD truss, but it looks cool.

 

[porkchop]

We either unload the double stack onto the loading dock or use a tractor that we truck we truck with us to unload it if we use a ramp. Once we get it in our hands things seem to work pretty well its just people moving them around and not noticing the hole in the ground that became a problem

 

[Footer]

Feld has the money to replace it, I know they do (Alpha washes and ice are a dead give away....)

I have seen some stuff ramped into trucks that shouldn't be, on more then on occasion. The places that only have one fork and only 2 docks can get bottle knecked very quickly. Worst I ever saw was a double stack of Barco Olites come flying down out of a truck and the top case pulling out of the cups before it stopped, now thats some money.

 

[What Rigger?]

Waaaaiiiit a minit! Lousy labor? In TEXAS? You're kidding me, right?

I have lived the dream. I have done the "ice rink built on the dirt floor of a horse arena". Ice shows suck. But I love me some hot, crazy skaters. El Paso...dear lord....

 

[photoatdv]

Porkchop, you never told us what happened with the lights (yes, I know this is an old thread, but I'm curious). Did they suvive that adventure?

 

[waynehoskins]

I read the thread without realizing it's an old one .. but I just had to make an observation:

That's what you get for doing a gig in A&M Town.

 

[Esoteric]

then we got to College Station, TX.

Well there is your problem.

Mike

 

[Esoteric]

We never, never, never stacked anything until it was already on the truck at the PAC.

Mike