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Bought a $280 remote for my 30-ton rig, and half the crew thinks I wasted cash
I picked up a wireless remote for my 30-ton rig about four months back after getting tired of yelling at the spotter through the cab glass on a tight job in Newark. It ran me $280 and the first two weeks were rough, the lag got scary when I was swinging a beam over a sidewalk. Now I would not go back, it let me walk the load and see what the spotter sees instead of guessing from the seat. But a guy on my crew says a remote makes new guys lazy and they never learn to read a load off feel. So which is it, is wireless control the future or are we raising operators who cannot work without a gadget? Curious what you all run and why.
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jessicaflores5d ago
Seen this movie before with grade control on dozers. The old guys swore GPS would kill the art of reading a blade, and ten years later every kid on a pad runs it, but the good ones still know how to cut a slope by eye when the receiver takes a dump. Same deal here, the remote is just a tool, and the guys who never learn load feel will hit the wall the first time the battery dies mid-pick or the signal drops behind a steel frame. The real problem is nobody pairs the gadget with teaching the basics anymore, so you get operators who can run a joystick but cannot tell you if a load is walking on them.
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