Quote Originally Posted by hemmjo View Post
I wish I had a video of a scene I witnessed at a landscape nursery. I was called there to do some routine maintenance on some equipment. As I arrived the entrance was blocked by a flat bed truck delivering a load of pavers on pallets. The guys unloading the truck had a small articulating tree spade, with forks on one end, tree spade on the other. NOT a heavy duty machine. As they tried to pick up the first pallet, the rear wheels lifted. So the operator ended the lift and lowered the rear wheels. Then they got all the guys they could and had them stand on the tree spade on the back. This time the bricks lifted a little, then the wheels lifted. The load was near perfectly balanced between on the front wheels. I was sitting in my truck wishing they would stop, but did not have time to yell for them to stop.

The operator backed away from the truck, sliding the pallet off the truck bed. As the pallet cleared the truck, the loader tipped forward, the pallet hit the ground breaking one of the bindings holding the bricks, some of the bricks fell off the pallet. This caused back to the machine to crash down in the back which case most of the guys to jump off. This then caused the remaining bricks to drag the front back down, which broke the rest of the bindings and more of the bricks fell off. Then the back crashed down again, at which point the machine broke in the middle. What a mess.

This was in the late 60's before video was so popular.
Using human counter weights is never a good idea but sometimes it may seem to be the only alternative at the time
I was getting ready to unload a palletized equipment engine from the side of a flatbed trailer. At the time the only machine I had at my disposal to unload trhe engine was a skid steer with a fork attachment At the height or the trailer I knew I could lift the engine but I also knew I would not have enough counter weight to lower it to the ground I told the driver this and he said I'll just stand on the back of your machine.
If you do then you will have to find someone else to operate it I said. But we have to get this engine off my truck he said
yes and hopefully not get anyone injured or killed in the process or damage the engine I said. So I drove my pickup up against the back of the skid steer and chained ti down to the front bumper. I told him to watch my instructions and slowly drive backwards when I signaled that ZI had the load raised. We backed up a few feet with the engine on the forks then I lowered it to the ground as quickly as could be safely done The pickup was more than enough to keep the loader from tipping. once on the ground I could lift the load just enough to more it around without the assistance of the pickup