Chapter 77

"I need for you to let them give you some instruction this morning for that 988H you bought. I want you to be the first one to operate it but we need to get it over with so one of Chucky's guys can use it.

"As you know they're doing a lot more than he planned for at first and using the loader for a while will help, so I leased it to them," Mom said.

"Leased it to them?" I asked.

"Yes, Chucky said thirty-five hundred a day was a fair price and he promised they'd clean it up when they were through. It's one of the reasons I bought the small dozer too, he'll be paying fifteen hundred a day for it. When the big one gets here it will go for three thousand a day and the small loader will get us another fifteen-hundred," Mom said.

"This is too weird, they're putting this in for us at no cost and they're paying us money to lease equipment to help them do it faster," I said.

"Don't forget what we're charging them for the freight to get it here. Jacob said he'd be glad to go to Tom's today for the larger track-hoe Chucky asked me to buy, so he could lease it.

"Jacob was feeling left out of the drop-deck parade and I told Tom to fix him up with two just like yours.

"Our main problem now is we need nearly a truck load of aluminum wheels. I'm sending one of the new drivers for them as soon as Jacob's truck is ready," Mom said.

"Oh, has it come in?"

"Yes, Ginny said Carl and his men worked all weekend to get the sleeper put on and it should be ready to go in an hour or two. One of the new drivers will take the practice truck afterwards and go for the wheels. I think Tom said they were in Cleveland," Mom said.

"I guess I should go see Chucky about my lesson then so they can get to work with the machine when I'm done."

"It'll be great, and I've already asked, there's room in the cab for Jacky to ride along with you. Chucky even had a little stool she could put right beside your seat. It will have to do until Tom makes arrangements for another real seat beside yours," Mom said.

When we got back to Chucky he called an operator over right away. He introduced us to Calvin, Cal for short, and Calvin showed Jacky and I to the loader.

Cal went with me for the first few minutes, using the stool Chucky had furnished for Jacky while he showed me how to work the controls. I was amazed at how easy they were.

I'd expected a complicated arrangement for changing gears and was totally floored with what it actually had. Where you'd normally expect the turn signal on a car, there was a lever you pushed forward to go forward and guess what, you pulled it back for reverse.

Changing gears was even easier. There were four gears and they'd each work for either forward or reverse, all I had to do was twist the handgrip sized handle to the gear I wanted. 1 through 4 was stamped around the circumference and there was an arrow pointing to show the gear you had selected.

With my right hand I controlled the bucket, one leaver to raise or lower it and one to tilt it forward or back. Nothing could be easier.

Of course it had power steering and it even had a steering knob on the wheel, the kind they used to have a long time ago on trucks which didn't have power steering.

I asked him if I needed to work the clutch to change gears and he told me no, it changed gears like an automatic transmission, it just didn't do it until you selected another one. He also told me if I did push the clutch, it would disengage with the first inch or so of travel and pressing it harder started applying the brakes.

There was also a large brake pedal but Cal told me if I always used the clutch-brake the brakes would last much longer, since they didn't have to try holding the machine while the five-hundred and thirty horsepower engine was trying to keep it moving.

It was slightly confusing since the big trucks also had something called a clutch-brake. On the trucks the clutch brake was not for stopping the vehicle though, it was only to stop the gears in the transmission from spinning while you were trying to engage low gear from a dead stop. I asked Calvin about it.

"They are called the same thing, but they are completely different. On a big truck, the clutch-brake is a tiny disc which goes around the input shaft for the transmission and it has nothing to do with the vehicle's brakes. On these loaders it is called a clutch-brake but it's actually just an alternative method of applying the vehicle's main brakes.

At least the foot feed was self-explanatory and worked as expected. It had one little quirk of its own though, or at least the machine did. The hydraulics barely worked at all unless the engines' rpms were up. This included the steering since it was completely hydraulic and there was no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the actual steering, in fact, with the engine off the steering wheel could be turned at will with no effect.

After we went over this Cal got out and told me to just fool around with it and try not to run over anything important.

Jacky got up beside me then and we tried it out. At first it seemed really odd to me, since for steering it bent in the middle instead of turning the front wheels to the direction I wanted to go. The wheel still made it turn in the direction I expected, but it felt different somehow.

"Why does it steer this way, Jacky?" I asked.

"So the wheels can be mounted to the axles more strongly. This thing doesn't need to make high-speed turns, it needs to lift stuff. Try picking up some dirt," she said.

I tried and she was laughing at me in only seconds. Of course I figured if you wanted to dig up some dirt you had to angle the bucket down, the farther down, the more dirt, right?

Wrong. When I moved the bucket to a steep downward angle and put some pressure on it and gave the machine some fuel it only went about six inches and then stopped and the giant tires even spun until I let off.

"What am I doing wrong?"

"For once you're biting off more than you can chew, even more than this big loader can chew. No matter how big this machine is it can't dig straight down. They have other machines for that, like the track-hoes.

"Pick the bucket up and then tilt it till it's level. Ok, now push the lift lever all the way forward until it stays," she said, pointing to the one which raised and lowered the bucket.

"When it's there, it lets the bucket float, it only presses on the ground from its weight. Now, with the tilt handle, give the bucket just a slight downward tilt," she said.

I did it her way and when I had she told me to move forward, slowly at first. When I pressed on the fuel this time we started scraping up dirt. It looked like it might be taking about six inches.

"That's how you get the bucket full on normal undisturbed ground. If something has already broken it up some you can take a bigger bite, or if you're working from a big pile to actually load trucks you use different techniques.

"I know the controls in this thing seem easy, and they actually are, but there's a lot of difference between learning to drive it around and learning to operate it correctly. Ride us around in it a little now without fooling with the bucket, it will be enough lesson for today," she said.

I did, and damn it was fun. The ride was pretty rough if we went very fast but I liked the way it turned by now. I didn't get close to anything though for fear that I'd run right over it without noticing.

When I'd had enough practice to suit me I drove back over near Cal and we unassed the thing. I thanked him for his lesson but realized Jacky had actually taught me more about using it.

"Next time, I'll show you how to push down a tree," she said, and then laughed at me.

I didn't care, because pushing down a tree sounded pretty cool to me and I was looking forward to it.

We had to do something with the flat bed I was hooked to before I could grab my empty drop-deck to take it back to Tom's place. We decided to leave the flatbed at the airport.