Golden Jubilee
Posts: 8937
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:45 pm
Location: Canada's left Coast
Re: What Was YOUR First Tool Set?
These guys bought and repurposed oversized oilfield service trucks and used the trucks to move oversize and extremely heavy anything. It was not uncommon for the Ledbetter Brothers to move am out-of-service grain elevator.
On one of my random trips to Alberta I wandered into a very large equipment storage yard. There was about 6 of these big flat-deck trucks with up to five driven axles and big winches with cable bigger than an inch diameter. If I recall, the power was Detroit V12 driving Allison.
I knocked on the office door to let someone know why I was there and this huge man filled to door frame and eclipsed the light. In a deep booming voice that could crack the ice on a back-yard rink, He asked how he might help. I said I was looking for some old hit and miss engines. The big man said they had two for sale and I was offered both engines for $10. I was asked who I was, this is when the connection to my Dad was made. The giant insisted that we have beer first and talk. He got two beer out of his 'fridge and gave them to me while explaining this is how he and his brother "do it." The bottle of Molson's Canadian looked like a shot-glass in his hand.
These big men were my Dad's friends and about Dad's age. If they were alive, today, this would put them around 100 year old.
The situation was, the local creek had changed course and the engines were 75% buried in the water and mud. For the $10, I had to figure out how to get the engines out of the creek and into my R120. The big man pointed at the yard and said, "Help yourself to what you need." I borrowed some long rope and used the R120 to gently tug the engines out of the creek. A couple of wet 2" by 12" planks made a good ramp to slide the engines into the R120. The one engine is a Nelsen Brother Little Jumbo 2 1/2 horsepower and the other engine is a Waterloo Boy 5 horsepower kerosene. I sold the Little Jumbo.
The attached video link is of a heavy grain elevator move. I do not think this is the Ledbetter Brothers Moving. https://youtu.be/x4PKFFY2lc8
What I miss the most from my youth in Alberta is characters like the Ledbetter Brothers and my Dad. These guys were born into hard times. It was the hard times that made tough men out of them and inspired ingenuity and the get-it-done way of thinking. I learned from these guys and often find myself in conflict with the new generation of "softies" who out of frustration with all they do not know manage to arrive at their final solution by telling someone to walk off the end of a dock.
Thinking risks being controversial and possibly being offensive