How to Clear Heavy Machinery from a Caved-In Shipping Pallet Without Power Equipment

Technology is relative. To a cave man, the stone axe was state of the art. During the nineteenth century, heavy machinery became king. Today, it's the digital age.

Tomorrow, like as not, we may well find ourselves back to sharpening the stone axe.

But when a shipping pallet caves in beneath a 1700 lb. Ditch Witch trenching machine during transit from Pennsylvania to Arizona, arriving tilted down on one side with its rear drive wheels buried in splintered wood...forget about high tech. I'd bought this thing on eBay, the shipper had mounted it on a pallet that was not strong enough for the load, and the result was a bit of a b**ch.

Arturo and I wrestled with the pallet jack until we managed to get the mess positioned on the delivery truck's lift gate. He was the delivery driver, I'd been a trucker myself, and we worked well enough together. Old Dominion, the original carrier, had of necessity managed (somehow) to place a strong, unbroken pallet beneath the busted up original.

That helped.

When he pulled out, though, I was left with a challenge: How was I going to get that heavy machine up and out of there?

Zach, my stepson, suggested a cherry picker, designed to pluck engines out of car chassis confinement. He has access to one, it's rated to handle up to 8,000 lb., but I veoted the idea immediately. Didn't like the look of the lift points as they related to various pieces of relatively fragile molding along the trencher's sides.

I had a plan, of course. I've always got a plan. Not always a good one, you understand. But a plan, nonetheless.

The first part of my plan was to remove the forward part of the offending junked-out pallet and the pallet below it so that the trail wheel would be hanging out in the air all by itself. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get the camera out of its case (on my belt, where it rides from sunup to sundown) until after performing that big of wood-surgery.

Got a shot of the aftermath, though.

At that point, I had no idea what to do for Step Two in this Ditch Witch Liberation mission might be.

Okay...before we were going to be able to move the beast out of the shattered wood, that 4" x 4" piece blocking the tires had to do. Which meant lifting the front end with Zach's bottle jack (mine's in our truck, which is in the shop) to take the weight off the wood. From there, it was a matter of applying hammer, crowbar, handsaw, whatever came to hand.

Looking good. Getting there.

Once the tire-blocking crosspiece was out of the way, it was time to clobber the remaining side pieces of the top (broken) pallet until nothing remained under the Ditch Witch but the newer, stronger Old Dominion pallet. After that, lift the front end of the machine with the crowbar so the bottle jack could make it's escape, let it down easy, and--almost done.

From there, it was a simple matter of pushing the machine the rest of the way off of the remaining pallet. It took some doing, especially since we discovered the left wheel would turn if the axle disconnect lever was in the right postion, but the right tire was skid-only. As near as we could tell, the beastie has to be running before that wheel will turn, period.

So...why not just start it and drive off the pallet?

Nah. There's no oil in the crankcase or gas in the tank, for one--for two things. And even if there were, it might not be a bad idea to read the manual first. Plus, the idea of powering a new-to-me machine out of a tilted, shattered-wood situation on its first day here...nope. Just not a hospitable thing to do.

In the end, Zach provided at least half of the ideas along the way and at least two thirds of the muscle, but it was done before sunset. Which turned out to presage the coolest total cloud eclipse of a full moon I've ever seen.

But that's another Hub.