Okay. Some of you guys asked for it. Here it is.

2 questions... do you guys send back the shipping pallets, or do you all get to build fences, sheds and decks with free lumber? Also, looking at how big everything is, how good are your peers at avoiding injury? To better qualify the second question, my years in automotive had many idiots (myself included) who worked too hard at muscling stuff together. I understand its a big issue in heavy trucks, where there is less good reason for it (if that's possible). You boys have bolts that take 2 men to move... I can see a very short lifespan for someone who doesn't pay attention or has superman tendencies.
 
2 questions... do you guys send back the shipping pallets, or do you all get to build fences, sheds and decks with free lumber? Also, looking at how big everything is, how good are your peers at avoiding injury? To better qualify the second question, my years in automotive had many idiots (myself included) who worked too hard at muscling stuff together. I understand its a big issue in heavy trucks, where there is less good reason for it (if that's possible). You boys have bolts that take 2 men to move... I can see a very short lifespan for someone who doesn't pay attention or has superman tendencies.

Good questions. Depending on the Branch store boss most pallets are up for grabs. Those huge ones have made more than a few guys an instant deck. Good eye. Safety is their number one concern. It’s not just a catch phrase, if our injury report goes up to a certain level we are barred from being a vendor at certain sites. Nobody really believed this until a injury paperwork error barred us from a huge customer site for 6 weeks. Talk about mayhem it screwed up everything the site was British owned and they were inflexible until the error was resolved. We really were locked out of the job. It was an eye opener. For the really huge stuff we use a hytorc. It’s like the jaws of life but for nuts and bolts. You’ll get torque specs done you just can’t achieve w an impact. All our specs are 3 5 700 ft lbs PLUS a quarter turn. That quarter turn eliminates most under torque errors.

At the CAT facilities many are what’s called zero waste. It’s hard to do but no trash leaves the property. 100% of the wood paper etc is recycled. That’s at CAT corporate level not us CAT dealers. Hard to sneak pallets off those sites.
 
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