Had a chat with an old dredge hand who made me rethink my whole approach to cutterhead maintenance

I was swapping war stories with a guy who's been running a dredge on the Mississippi since the 80s, and he told me he never greases his cutterhead bearings more than once a shift. He claimed over-greasing actually wears them out faster by blowing out the seals. Has anyone else heard this, or is he just running on old school habits that might not apply to newer equipment?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.wren1d ago

Less is more with most things in life, but we overdo it anyway.

grant_perry1d ago

Is it really about doing less though @kim.wren? I think the problem is more about doing the wrong things too much. Like with food - eating less overall is good advice, but eating less of the bad stuff is what really matters. You can eat small amounts of junk food all day and it still kills you. Same with work. People brag about working 80 hour weeks on things that don't matter. It's not the volume that's the issue, it's the quality of what you're putting your time into. Less is only better when you're cutting the worthless stuff, not when you're just doing less of everything.