The Job
Well Karen pestered me enough for me to write a new blog post.
So this is my job. I do stuff for the department of highways. Currently I'm trained to Check and to Scale. So after reading the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for both of these things, along with the SOP for driving to work. I knew nothing about how to do my job.
Scaling is easy though. Trucks drive onto the scale. I'm in a shack next to the scale. I have a displaying telling me now much they weigh and then I fill out a card for them to take to the checker. It's quite simple and involves some subtractions of tare weights and that's about it. Ohh and dealing with angry truckers when they come in overweight. So if they are 34.5 Tonnes then yay. If they are over that then they have to go dump. and that's not fun for them because it costs them money as they are paid by the load.
Checking is a lot harder. You guide the truck to the pile you want them to dump at. You then find out how much they weigh, you then check your chart, you then plot out how far they should cover while dumping using your meter wheel thinggie. You then help them dump by watching the rate at which they are dumping over the distance. However you also have to periodically go and get your truck so that it isn't too far behind you. Which if you never get a break is hard. I'll get into the truck later.
Then at the end of the day you have to tally up all the tags that were handed out. There are different sections that are tally'd separately. Yesterday there were 8 separate tally's. the day before 3. They just take a long time because you have to add the total mass from about 200 separate sheets of paper.
So I'd been with highways for 4 days and it was the morning of the 5th day and what do I get? A CVA! Which for those of you not familiar with the government is a Government car, or in my case, Truck! However they won't give me a phone/radio so my boss can contact me like everybody else on his crew with the exception of Liz who also is a student along with me. Now driving a government truck is fun, but even more fun because I've got warning lights. I've got spinning lights on a truck on a construction site. It's basically every boy's dream (Admit to it guys). I'm the guy telling the big tonka trucks where to put their dirt. I don't get to play with the graders but I can get over that. Also on my first day with the truck I got it stuck in the sand by a culvert because well, i forgot it wasn't a 4x4. Liz today got her truck on the side of the road, so I'm not that bad of a driver.
So far that's all I've done. Today I've been in the scale shack all day and i've got 1.5 hours left till 7 at which point tally's will take an hour because they are uber complicated today. ALso after spending 11 hours in this shack. My computer is awesome at keeping me entertained. And thank you Andy for the content!
Peace out from Maidstone!
So this is my job. I do stuff for the department of highways. Currently I'm trained to Check and to Scale. So after reading the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for both of these things, along with the SOP for driving to work. I knew nothing about how to do my job.
Scaling is easy though. Trucks drive onto the scale. I'm in a shack next to the scale. I have a displaying telling me now much they weigh and then I fill out a card for them to take to the checker. It's quite simple and involves some subtractions of tare weights and that's about it. Ohh and dealing with angry truckers when they come in overweight. So if they are 34.5 Tonnes then yay. If they are over that then they have to go dump. and that's not fun for them because it costs them money as they are paid by the load.
Checking is a lot harder. You guide the truck to the pile you want them to dump at. You then find out how much they weigh, you then check your chart, you then plot out how far they should cover while dumping using your meter wheel thinggie. You then help them dump by watching the rate at which they are dumping over the distance. However you also have to periodically go and get your truck so that it isn't too far behind you. Which if you never get a break is hard. I'll get into the truck later.
Then at the end of the day you have to tally up all the tags that were handed out. There are different sections that are tally'd separately. Yesterday there were 8 separate tally's. the day before 3. They just take a long time because you have to add the total mass from about 200 separate sheets of paper.
So I'd been with highways for 4 days and it was the morning of the 5th day and what do I get? A CVA! Which for those of you not familiar with the government is a Government car, or in my case, Truck! However they won't give me a phone/radio so my boss can contact me like everybody else on his crew with the exception of Liz who also is a student along with me. Now driving a government truck is fun, but even more fun because I've got warning lights. I've got spinning lights on a truck on a construction site. It's basically every boy's dream (Admit to it guys). I'm the guy telling the big tonka trucks where to put their dirt. I don't get to play with the graders but I can get over that. Also on my first day with the truck I got it stuck in the sand by a culvert because well, i forgot it wasn't a 4x4. Liz today got her truck on the side of the road, so I'm not that bad of a driver.
So far that's all I've done. Today I've been in the scale shack all day and i've got 1.5 hours left till 7 at which point tally's will take an hour because they are uber complicated today. ALso after spending 11 hours in this shack. My computer is awesome at keeping me entertained. And thank you Andy for the content!
Peace out from Maidstone!
posted by Caesar Amadeus at 6:42 AM
1 comments
