TIL that 'walking the load' is a myth my old foreman swore by

So my first foreman back in 2018, Dave, he used to always say you could 'walk' a load by bumping the swing brake in rhythm. He made it sound like some secret trick only old timers knew. I tried it on a job lifting AC units onto a roof in Phoenix last summer. Nearly dumped a 3-ton unit into a drywall truck because the load started swinging way worse. Turns out he was just lucky with light loads and good wind conditions. A structural engineer I met on site later told me the physics don't work that way, you're just fighting the pendulum effect. Has anyone else had an old timer teach them something that turned out to be completely off?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlesj462d agoTop Commenter

That pendulum effect is brutal once it gets going. Lots of those old "tricks" were just survivorship bias from guys who got lucky.

sandra7152d ago

My buddy Mike who runs a crane crew in Houston swears by walking loads and I've seen him do it with 10 ton HVAC units on tight downtown jobs. He said the key is not just tapping the brake but feeling the natural swing of the load and working with it, not against it. I watched him do it last fall over a parking garage and it was dead smooth, no drama at all. If you just try to muscle it like your foreman said without knowing the load's timing you're gonna have a bad time for sure. The pendulum effect is real but if you have the right touch and the right wind conditions you can make it work, just not on every job or every lift.