Crane drops antenna tower section - GIF

[Frank S]

That is not how high riggers think. He was not smushed by falling iron.
The next day, after changing his shorts for clean ones, he would be telling everybody how much fun it was. A kind of humble brag while looking for another tower to climb.
High riggers and iron workers are in a class of their own. They are the daredevils of construction. Walking iron is always on that thin edge between absolute terror and absolute confidence. There is nothing else I know of quite like it. A lot of these guys are parachute jumpers, bikers, base jumpers. You know, all the thrill seeking adrenaline junky stuff.

Early paid retirement? How is that going to pay for my play time? One of the features of this kind of work is it pays big money because not very many people can actually do it. Most people freeze at heights. The downside (?) is most of the jobs are fairly short term, which gives you time to go play. As a scaffold rigger I could pull almost 20 grand before taxes for a 28 day run on a refinery shutdown. The money I got back just on income taxes by taking time off paid for my holidays.

Back in the 1980's as a contract welder with my own rig. During that time in the area where I was the going rate ran from $25.00 to $40.00 per hour for general contract welding and repairs. I was one of the ones who carried a huge liability ins. policy with an even larger umbrella, Mostly because I did a lot of repairs on oil drilling rigs which meant I had to have an over the hole insurance. When a shut-down at a refinery or even a chemical plant came up I usually would get a call if the job was located within a couple hundred miles from where I lived. I both liked and hated getting those calls. Liked because they nearly always meant from 14 to 28 days of 12 to 16 hour work periods @ often times triple the hourly rate, I would normally get doing day work. Hated because I had a significant customer base who kept me busy nearly all the time and I would have to tell them I would not be available for a few weeks. One shut-down is indelibly marked in my memories, A man by the name of Don Killebrew from a cement plant called me one evening just after I had gotten home from a long week's repair on a drill rig. I had worked all night the previous night to be able to finish up and make it home for my youngest's birthday, after having made the 200 mile drive I was wiped out. All I wanted was a shower a piece of cake and some sleep.
The conversation went like this Frank I need you and 6 others to be at the plant by 8 am tomorrow for a 2-week EPA refit until the refit is completed the entire plant is ordered shut down. I'll take 10 guys if you can find them, but they have to have the proper insurances.
If I can find that many guys tonight, I'll have them there I said but I doubt if many will have the insurance riders that I have.
FINE, you will have to carry them on your insurance like you did for a couple guys last year. BYE. he hung up without another word.
I spent the rest of the evening calling every welder I knew. You'd be amazed at how many guys will turn down a couple weeks worth of work when you tell them they have to have insurance and they are going to have to commit to being on the job 12 to 18 hours a day every day no exceptions, and the number of those who will balk at the prospect of having to work from a gondola man basket of one hung from a crane a couple 100 feet in the air I found 8, 2 of which had to work single hand as helpers on my payroll, at much less pay without their rigs because on not having any insurance. The shut down only lasted 12 days though, but 12 of the most gruelingly miserable dusty cold days I have ever worked.