Safety Rules With Equipment

[NeverSure]

Please pardon me folks. I read this forum regularly, and often run out of "thanks" for the day due to farming pictures. I love the forum.

I grew up on a ranch in the US, and I notice quite a few here who are new to farming, and even new to owning a tractor or other equipment. I want to, with your pardon, offer some things that were drilled into me as a kid regarding safety. Probably you already know all of these things, but if you don't you could die.

I have read many, many times that the #1 killer on a farm is tractor rollover. A rollover protection system (ROPS) or "roll bar" won't necessarily save you, but much of the time it will. Still, who wants to turn his tractor over?

The ROPS may be of little help if you don't have and use a good seat belt. They are cheap enough.

Your tractor has enough weight on the back wheels, enough traction, low enough gears, and enough power to decide to rotate the tractor around the rear axle instead of rotating the wheels, and bring the nose of the tractor up and over and right on top of you, crushing you under the tractor while the tractor's wheels are in the air and it's upside down. It can happen so fast you won't know what hit you.

Your brand new tractor may have a mercury kill switch to prevent that, but I don't know about safety in LOS.

Your tractor has enough weight, a high enough center of gravity, and enough power to spin a rear wheel that it can quickly dig in and tip sideways into a creek or irrigation ditch if you are too close and parallel to the ditch. You can drown pinned under it even if the ROPS is there but sinks into the mud. Approach ditches and banks only perpendicular to, and with the front wheels of the tractor, and do it carefully and not too close. Give away a couple of meters of land to the wildlife along that ditch, and stay away from it please.

Never hook a chain or other towing setup to anything that's higher than the center of the rear axle. That's when you're asking the tractor to lift its nose and come back over on top of you. Always hook to the draw bar or properly hook to the 3 point hitch. If you hook to the draw bar, an excessive pull will push the front wheels down and at worst the rear wheels will spin.

I understand that the 3 point hitch was first designed by Ferguson to prevent tractors from flipping over backwards. The first 3 point hitch didn't have a hydraulic lift. That wasn't its purpose. The hydraulic lift came along as an after thought. So did the live PTO. So be sure that the pins and ball joints on your 3 point are in good condition, and sized for the tractor. They are your safety mechanism for pulling.

Please shut off your tractor's engine if you are getting off, and set the brakes. The first killer is a rear tire. The second is the turning PTO. I know two guys who lost their arms by getting shirt sleeves caught in the PTO. One was in the bare shaft, and the other was in a U-Joint. I knew another who was killed and he was a friend of mine. I knew a guy who was sucked into a hay baler, and another who's clothes got caught in the flywheel on the side of a baler. If you're going to use any part of yourself to work on it or clear it or whatever, please shut it all off?

Wear pants that are secured at the bottom, even if you have to tape them. If you are going to wear long sleeved shirts, please tape them. First a rotating piece of equipment or a conveyor belt grabs your pants or shirt sleeve and begins to wind that up, then it pulls your body with it. Don't please?

If it's designed to mechanically pull in and cut or crush a farm product, it may be able to pull you in and cut or crush you too. Heads up at all times, please.

If you have to get an excavator down a slope, run it straight down and never side hill. They are really top heavy. Set yourself up with a 3 point contact by curling the bucket as a skid, and putting it on the ground out ahead of the machine. The bucket and arm are strong enough to lift the excavator, and strong enough to reach out front and keep the excavator from rolling down the slope, so you use the bucket as a skid. This applies to driving on and off of a trailer. You back onto the trailer with the bucket staying close to the ground and you come right back off the same way - bucket first and close to the ground to catch the excavator.

This seems counter-intuitive because you have most of the weight down hill, but if you drive an excavator straight up a hill or trailer ramps boom and bucket first, nothing will catch you if you tip over backwards. The bucket and arm are strong enough to push an excavator up onto a trailer, so use that help if you need it, while using the power and 3 point balance to assure you won't tip over.

OK, Thanks for indulging me. I'll stop for now. I'm sure others can add to this, and I really hope they do. I worry about folks who are teaching themselves to farm with equipment.

Oh, one more thing. Don't pee on the electric fence.

[NeverSure]

Too late to edit. I think I read comments on here about not carrying a load high in a loader. A turn could easily tip you over. Same goes for running side hill. I do think everyone knows this, but hey, it's a list.

[johnbarpic]

Good Sir

Its great to see Safety mentioned in this Forum we can risk assess until the cows come & install every safety device known to man but our biggest problem is US.. the human being & that thought we all have from time to time ''it will never happen to me'' which is true not until the day it does.

I could bore you to death with case history of Farming Accidents & incidents from the UK some in my own family. But guys & girls please take your time check what you need don't take short cuts & every day you climb in the tractor think why your doing it...For your family they need you & you need them place a picture of your loved ones one the dash just so you know they are watching.

Happy farming to all of you have a great day (its a nice day for it)

John B-P.. International Safety Advisor

[cooked]

In my experience, per working hour professionals are less likely to respect common sense rules (well I'm talking about chain saw work but same same) than an anxious amateur. These are the ones that have accidents, due to lackadaisicality. I used to have to go on a refresher course for chain saw usage every two years, including CPR, rescue out of trees, all that stuff.

No harm in reminding people now and again.

[NeverSure]

In my experience, per working hour professionals are less likely to respect common sense rules (well I'm talking about chain saw work but same same) than an anxious amateur. These are the ones that have accidents, due to lackadaisicality. I used to have to go on a refresher course for chain saw usage every two years, including CPR, rescue out of trees, all that stuff.

No harm in reminding people now and again.

Hey, I agree completely about the getting too familiar part. My concern came up by reading about people buying farm equipment when they hadn't operated it before. How would they know where the most likely dangers are to be careful of?

You and I both know that if you touch the end of your running chain saw to a log, it can flip up and cut your skull open. We also know what a widow maker is. We know that when you cut a limb off a fallen tree, the saw can drop down and nearly cut your leg off.

But you wouldn't turn someone loose with a new chain saw, if he'd never been around one, without explaining some of those things.

[Khonwan]

An excellent post, NeverSure.

I’ve owned my Ford 6600 for around 15 years now. I’ve never been the primary operator but did, in the past, quite often use it myself for odd jobs. I rarely do so now as I have almost learned to leave it to someone with greater experience acquired by constant use. My earlier occasional operation of it led to some truly frightening moments with death looking me in the face.

I’ve experienced it balancing side-wards on two wheels (as with most old Fords here, it has no ROP).

I’ve reversed it and (by mistake) allowed it to slip a little over the dry slope of a pond (my hand brake didn’t work so I was so grateful for the hand accelerator that allowed me to use the foot brake whilst commencing forward acceleration).

I had a 6-wheel trailer weighing 7 tonnes with a load of cassava jack-knife on my tractor when driving down a very bad slope with a very poor gravel surface.

I could have been crushed by the rear wheel when I was jump-starting the tractor with my pickup. The tractor was on a bit of a slope (facing down slope) with the disk-harrower acting as a brake but the hydraulic lever was mistakenly in the lift position, which was then activated by the jump-start, effectively removing my only brake causing the tractor to gather speed (in neutral) down the slope. Standing between the front and rear wheels and almost fenced in with my pickup and jump-leads, I considered jumping on to it (I unfortunately didn’t have the presence of mind to simply depress the foot brakes with my hand) but thankfully chose instead to somehow get out of the way and let it go, whereupon it eventually hit a tree with its right rear wheel and slowed to a virtual stop before I gained control of it.

These are only the most-memorable near-fatal accidents. They were all caused by a lack of respect for this incredibly dangerous machine, not to mention my sheer stupidity despite the fact that I am allegedly a person of above average intelligence.

I’ve also been guilty of giving workers and family a lift on the back of the tractor, and guilty of accepting lifts when it has been driven by another. Around two years ago, a neighbour lost his 2yo son who had been sitting on his knees whilst he was driving home on his tractor: the boy slipped down and was crushed by the rear wheel.

When it comes to operating tractors and other dangerous farm equipment, learn by the mistakes of idiots like me rather than by your own mistakes – I’ve been very lucky, you may not be so. Better still, let more experienced workers operate them.

Rgds
Khonwan

P.S. to Cooked: some of us amateur operators are not as anxious as we should be.

[kickstart]

Those who have chipper shreaders, be weary, mine is PTO driven, no guards, nor have the drive belts, good bit of kit but I am allways very weary.

I know of 2 farmers who have lost fingers to shreaders, the worse case a Thai contractor making maize silage, some how lost an arm allmost up to the elbow . I still see him driving his pick- up how, I do not know , another Thai I knew flipped his tractor, died.

Thanks to the OP for bringing up this subject ,in the UK it was, probable still is, farming and construction that has the greatest number of fatalities, as an industry, over here don`t think about it.

Yours Reg

KS

[lockman]

Those who have chipper shreaders, be weary, mine is PTO driven, no guards, nor have the drive belts, good bit of kit but I am allways very weary.

I know of 2 farmers who have lost fingers to shreaders, the worse case a Thai contractor making maize silage, some how lost an arm allmost up to the elbow . I still see him driving his pick- up how, I do not know , another Thai I knew flipped his tractor, died.

Thanks to the OP for bringing up this subject ,in the UK it was, probable still is, farming and construction that has the greatest number of fatalities, as an industry, over here don`t think about it.

Yours Reg

KS

Personally growing up with a lot of equipment that was operated by a PTO, and the number of seriously injured as well as death, I would not even use or allow use of a PTO driven equipment that didn't have guards. I have had people come to do things for us who ignore safety entirely. They are gone.

[slapout]

Just a few examples'I have seen/followed etc

Tractor tilted or came over on uphill climb 4 fatilities

Pto caught colthing then body 5 bad injury, 1 death

fell off of tractor in brushhog, oneway, plow 3 fatilities

caught foot, hand in grain auger 6 come to mind, all involved loss of limb

rolling up barbed wire with pickup wheel while jacked up 1 fatility

ATV roll over, too many to count/rember 2fatilities, numerous injury

Chain saw kicked back 2 serious injury

Jump starting a vehicle while in gear, 1 fatility, 2 serious injury

horse fell on rider, 2 fatility, numerous injury

Carbon monoxide poisoning, electricuted,drowned, backing a vehicle over someone,etc4 fatilities

Statistics indicate you were safer assulting the beach on D Day than working on a farm for a lifetime.

[IsaanAussie]

I am amazed there aren't more tractor injuries around here. Some of the locals operate so recklessly. I have only had fright on my tractor when I put a rear wheel into a sink hole (tree had been removed) when ploughing and it lurched over at 45 degrees. I was amazed at how fast it tilted over. I walk any land I work first to check for rocks and logs etc, but missed that sour patch. I have never seen a Thai actually walk around first.

The only tractor accident I have witnessed near here was a guy towing an overloaded trailer up the slope from rice paddy to the road and it reared up. Damage to gear but luckily only bruises and scratches to the operator.

There have been two new tractors turn up here and the training seems to be how to grade and how to engage the plough. Neither were shown how to change implements and the rotary hoes are still where the truck delivered them. Setting up the three point hitch or the PTO wasn't even talked about.

One thing I see consistently is welding without any eye protection. Another is using the wrong cutting discs on drop saws and grinders. Like so many things here, if it fits, it must work! Lets try it anyway...

[NeverSure]

I have a friend who lost an eye simply by cutting fence wire with wire cutters. We call them side cutters, but they are like pliers with cutting edges. A sliver flew off the fence wire somehow and embedded in his eye. He got a lens replacement in his eye but it never was the same.

Safety was pounded into me, but it might have been my age and the worry of the adults. I was pulling a 20 foot (6 meter) wide plow with a bulldozer, driving a wheat combine and even a wheat dump truck when I was 12. When I was 14 I got a special farm permit to drive the dump trucks 30 miles (45 km) to the grain elevator on public rural roads. Dump trucks and combines and track layers are dangerous too.

I earned all of my spending money working for neighbors planting and harvesting wheat, and going out on horseback for checking and repairing fence lines and rounding up cattle.

We had about 6 square miles, which I think might be about 15 square km of land. ?? Half was a bit rocky and very hilly and perfect for grazing cattle, and about 1/2 was good dry land (no irrigated) farm land for wheat and alfalfa. I couldn't begin to say how many linear feet of fence that was, but I can tell you what it's like to plow and disc and plant 3 square miles (maybe 7 square km?) of land. Think 2 D8 bulldozers running staggered pulling 40 feet (12 meters?) of plow. for a few days.

I'm jealous of you guys.

[NeverSure]

I was talking about using the bucket as a third leg out front to keep from tipping an excavator over. That's both on and off a trailer, too. Here's a decent quick demo.

And another.

Edited April 10, 2013 by NeverSure

[NeverSure]

Now, haha, the best equipment operator I've ever known told me that if you haven't tipped a piece of equipment over, you never learn its limits.

I think I mentioned that my current place is dangerously steep.

Here's mine. Yes, mine. (Before I sold it not long ago)

http--,,--//

Edited April 10, 2013 by NeverSure

[NeverSure]

Here's a demo of how fast a tractor can go up in front and come over on top of you.

[NeverSure]

Here's why we don't drive too close to a bank, and why we have ROPS. People died, if you're squeamish.

Edited April 10, 2013 by NeverSure