I’ve stuck a tractor or two in my day, and every time it sucks, even if you just need to hook the pickup to it and yank it out. But to rent a machine, and then bury a machine, to this level? This is a whole other level of “oh crap”. Apparently the operator of this excavator was clearing out, or building a pond in a local neighborhood and the water and mud got too much and buried the machine. We’re talking mud inside the door up to the seat. Amazingly, the water level did not get high enough to flood out the engine so it still runs. It will not track because it is so buried though and the master operator of the rescue excavator says he’s never seen one so buried.
It’s a feat to get this one unstuck, but one that is fun to watch. I cringe thinking about how it must have felt to make the call to the rental company telling them you buried their machine and have no way of getting it out. I am pretty sure this will get him on the No Rent list for sure.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a piece of rental equipment?
I have never stuck one in mud like that. But in my younger days running rental equipment. On one job in particular we found that the L35 Kubota backhoe would carry the front wheels for about 20 feet off a bump, if you throttled up just right. It never came down easy, but was so fun to do when its not your machine