What Has Been The Hardest Physical Work, You Have Done?

[TexasRanger]

Planting my rubber trees in the unforgiving issan heat, hard but satisfying.

[bunnydrops]

Setting choker for logging company, up and down steep hill sides and often in 2 feet of water or snow. The guy I went to work with got hit by the choker the first day and broke 3 ribs. Greenline in shingle mill, keeping the sawyers stocked with green 100 lb bolts carried by hand from the splitter to the saws.

[sgtsabai]

bunnydrops, I did a bit of tree cutting, mostly on fires, fire breaks, some timber/logging, damn hard work. Never will forget the first 2 man saw that I had occasion to work with. Big fire up in the Klamath, I had never seen trees so big. Cut into them and it was like hitting a water main. Logger asked me if I wanted to swamp for him, damn I thought I did hard work, my reply, politely-not no but hell no!

[loong]

A few of you have mentioned roof tiling.

I did that for a while.

Had this lad working at one site and his job was to load a basket with the new tiles and pull them up with a rope and single pulley. I was up on the scaffolding and would pull the basket onto the scaffolding, take the tiles out and then put the stuff that I had stripped off the old roof in for him to let down to the ground.

Because the property had a long pathway, the lad realised that it was a bit easier if he walked up the path as this was using the power of his legs instead of just his arms to haul the tiles up.

So I loaded the basket, swung it out off of the scaffolding a shouted "are you ready" He said yes.

The poor bloke was tired and this load was the camel's back breaker.

As I let go, he was unable to hold it and was nearly dragged off his feet as he was standing at the end of the path. As he couldn't hold it and didn't let go of the rope, he started running. I was screaming at him to let go because I could see that he would arrive below the pulley before the load hit the ground and possibly land on top of him. Luckily, he was pulled off his feet, let go and landed flat on his face before the load hit the ground.

It wasn't funny at the time, but afterwards when I think about it it always makes me laugh. His legs going 20 to the dozen, almost like a cartoon character that runs off of a cliff

[jonnyscot]

The hardest work physically for me was the 16 years i spent in the fishing industry, not only the physical side though, it was also mentally draining since sometimes days on end were spent with little sleep sometimes 3 full days no sleep and then if you were lucky you'd get maybe 2 or 3 hours in bed before you were back to it for another couple days maybe catching a 30 minute nap in between food breaks,, nowadays it ain't so bad but when I started n the early eighties nearly everything was done manually, shovelling up from 4 ton to 10 ton or more of fish and preparing them for cold storage doing this in between other work repairing nets etc,, every 3 or 4 hours round the clock for 8 or 10 days with a day at home in between before starting all over again,this work was done mostly in soaked clothing due to the weather conditions in the north sea, some weeks pay was very good, but some weeks you got no pay for doing exactly the same work due to poor market prices sometimes the vessels couldn't make enough to pay the running costs,, in my fathers day it was much harder for them, so I got it fairly easy compared to them older lads

[bunnydrops]

bunnydrops, I did a bit of tree cutting, mostly on fires, fire breaks, some timber/logging, damn hard work. Never will forget the first 2 man saw that I had occasion to work with. Big fire up in the Klamath, I had never seen trees so big. Cut into them and it was like hitting a water main. Logger asked me if I wanted to swamp for him, damn I thought I did hard work, my reply, politely-not no but hell no!

Another northwester. I lived on the Olympic peninsula (Forks). The work nearly killed me, but man did my body look good.

[mikecwm]

Marine Corps boot camp.

I worked on a farm for a summer. That was tough.

I was a bicycle messenger in San Francisco and going up all and down all the hills all day was pretty good exercise.

Marine Corps boot camp.. How did I forget that one?. go to bed totally exhausted every night.. waking up in the morning hoping it was all a bad dream.

After finishing Pendleton, never so fit in my life. humping the trails in South Vietnam.. lugging 60 - 80 pound rucks. sleeping beside the paths on the ground, hoping not to wake up with a cobra sleeping on your chest. hoping to wake up. Lord we were young then. had the world by the ass and didn't know it.

I think it may have been the Vietcong who had the world by the ass.

Semper Fi..

[murrinman]

Rc drilling 12 hour shifts didnt stop running $1.05 aust a metre 250 metres a day young mans job

[Issangeorge]

Off loading 35,000 pounds of yams from Jamaica every night.After coming out of the hold of a DC8 it would take 10 minutes to straighten out my back again. Working in a mine. Teaching school, I was surprised our much physical energy teaching took.

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[Canada]

Roughneck on a service rig, by far the nastiest job I ever had, later working on a real drilling rig seemed like a real improvement,

Oh to have the back and energy of an 18 year old again

Shit. I went out on the rigs for the first time at 43.

[Canada]

BC coastal tree planter

herbicide sprayer

BC coastal tree planter

herbicide sprayer

My home province.

[tim armstrong]

There is a book in those stories. I was brought up on an Australian sheep farm so most days were long, hot and dusty, but you didn't mind hard work, in fact you even revelled in it. I once drenched more than 1,000 sheep in one day, must be some kind of record. Throwing bales of freshly mown hay which was full of thistles,onto a truck wasn't easy. Gloves didn't help much. Working on an iron ore railroad in Western Australia in the early 70's was a challenge. Most days 45C or above. You could fry eggs on a rock. But we drove machines that straightened the track to cope with a train carrying iron ore that came past every hour. Contract for the ore supply was 56 years.Not so hard physically, but the heat and the conditions were tough. Have shovelled sheep and pig shit at various times. I guess I was young enough to stand it all, -somehow at 18-22yrs you thought you were invincible.