Short Man Syndrome and How to Operate a Pipelayer

My father taught me several key lessons in life, many of which I don’t recall.

Perhaps the most important, and the one that sticks out in my mind, was to be cautious when dealing with short men (men who have a small stature). I kind of recall this Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes, Beware Man speech he gave to me, but about short dudes.

The thing is, he was absolutely right. All my life, any short dude I have encountered has always been trying to prove something to me because they were short. They always kind of have this little (ha ha) chip on their shoulder. If they’re good at something, they wrap themselves around it and define themselves by it, and want to always tell you how much better they are at it than you.

I’ve known some cool short dudes as well, but I can count them on about two fingers.

Carter is pretty short right now on the growth chart, which means nothing really. My dad, and my wife’s dad are both average height, and I’m 6’2” so I’m not terribly concerned for him.

I’ve been working on a deregulated 587R pipelayer. It’s old school and billows black smoke when you pull the mechanical governor to full throttle. It doesn’t have any roll over protection on it, so if you tip over in it, you’re dead unless you can jump away from it in time.

To steer it there are two levers and two brakes in front of you. Clutches and Brakes. You pull in the clutch on the side whose track you want to slow down or stop and push the brake. The art and grace that is involved in turning a pipelayer like this comes in because you’ve got several tons of winch and counterweight over the right track which means you have lower traction the left side.

If you’re on concrete and make a right hand turn and don’t really know what you’re doing, it kind of sounds like the worse nails on chalk board sound you’ve ever heard in your life.

It’s a good way to piss everyone around you off who isn’t wearing earplugs. Got to learn somehow.