Neil from Messick's here to give you a little bit of a warning, this morning. Recently we had a workplace injury here among one of our salespeople in a scenario that I know I've had a lot of close calls in myself. This morning I'm going to walk you through on this tractor here, show you something you wanna watch for on that skid steer coupler. Hopefully, it'll help you from making the same mistake that this guy did.
Now, I don't know about you, but when I go to set my loader down for the day, if I've been at work and I'm going back to the garage, the way that I tend to set that down is by popping the loader up in the float, by pushing the valve the whole way forward over the detent into the float position that opens up the boom cylinder. Now that's great. That's an easy way to go park your tractor, but what you want to remember is that if your next step is to go back and open up the skid steer coupler and change your implement out, that boom is in float and can move easily. If I take my skid steer coupler here, open this up, and I pull this last handle, my bucket drops to the ground and my boom comes down. Now that's because my loader, again, was in float. The bucket is supposed to behave this way. It's supposed to come down to the ground. Really useful for scraping things clean, back dragging, or scraping snow off your driveway. A lot of reasons to use this.
If you're headed to go and say switch to your pallet forks, you want to make sure you don't have that in float when you disconnect your skid steer coupler because the coupler can come unhooked from the bucket, drop to the ground, and potentially catch your foot. Hopefully, that saves somebody else from having a bruised foot. I know this has happened to me more than once. I've been lucky enough not to have my foot in the wrong place when it happened, but you want to keep this in mind.
A little bit of caution here can go a long way to keep you from limping around for the next couple of weeks. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment and we can help, if you have parts or service needs for a machine you've already got, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at (800)222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
Neil from Messick's here out today at my father-in-law's house. We're helping him out a little bit here today. The transmission belt tore on his mower in the middle of cutting his grass. He's got a big swath here left over that I'm over here helping him take care of today with my mower. You can see here that his yard is a challenge to mow. It's fantastic for sledding in the winter time, but a bear to take care of here during the summer to get the grass taken care of. So we're going to do a little bit of talking while we're out here cutting his grass today, about mowing on a hillside. There are safe ways to try to keep yourself from riding down the hill and also a couple of techniques that you can use that if your mower does break loose and slide, to help to recover a little bit from a dangerous situation. Come along here with me today, as we do a little bit of good this afternoon.
Cutting grass on a hillside is no joke. You may think you're just out-cutting a lawn, but actually, this could be deceptively dangerous. This one's a little bit personal to me because about 10 years ago, I actually had a customer kill himself on a Zero Turn mower. A gentleman was out on a hillside, the machine, slid down the hill and went over the top of an embankment, which was ultimately his end, unfortunately. There are a couple of things that you could do out here to keep yourself a little bit safer. We're going to talk today a little bit about the ways to go up and down a hill safely maybe when you're traversing one across the sides and techniques to keep yourself stuck to the side of the hill, and if the machine does break loose and slide. A couple of the techniques that you can use to hopefully drive out of it safely.
Kevin lost his leg in an accident involving a PTO shaft. He shares his story and how to keep a safety-conscious mindset to prevent injuries like his own.
Skid loaders and compact track loaders are very popular machines, but they come with some inherent risk both for the operator and those outside of the machine. What are the best ways to keep yourself and others safe while using these versatile loaders?
