Digger

It was an interesting machine to operate to say the least as the controls were very different to anything I had operated on Wimpeys. For starters the left hand lever where you would normally pull it back to bring in the dipper, on the O&K the movement was reversed which took some getting used to for a while! Add to that the fact you had to use a foot brake to slow the slew down it certainly made you think for a bit.

I spent a week on site loading away surplus topsoil onto wagons and that was it, I was out of work again.

The following Monday I got a new job for a small plant hire firm called Itchen Plant Hire which was run by the ex plant manager of Bath Plant in Southampton Alan Pulford.
He had 3 or 4 Hitachi excavators that had been refurbished by the importers at that time Beazer Plant based in Somerset. To start with I was covering for other drivers whilst they were on holiday and my first mount was to be a Hitachi UHO7 like this example.

A few weeks later I was sent to a site in Winchester to cover for another operator on a Hitachi UHO4 excavator, this deployment was to be an eye opener to the fact that you can't please everyone in our game.

I turned up on site and introduced myself to the foreman who told me to go and wait in my van, about 15 minutes later he came out and told me to go and ring my boss, after finding a phone box my boss told me that the customer had said I was no good on the machine! now bear in mind I had not even unlocked the door at this point let alone moved a track in anger? The worst case of someone's face not fitting that I have ever experienced.

Some weeks later I was on hire to a company called J.M.Smyth Contractors operating a Hitachi UHO2 6 ton machine on a smalll housing site, the company owner was a great Irishman called Joe and we got on like a house on fire.

He told me that he had a lot of work coming off in Waterloovile nr Portsmouth and asked me if I would be interested in working for him? Joe made me a financial offer that I simply could not refuse and so a week later I started for Joe on one of his new JCB 805B turbo's on a David Wilson homes site in Cowplain.

The groundwork's foreman on Smyth's was a chap called Pat Smart who was affectionately known as "Smarty" he was also a machine operator and we got on well together because he understood the problems we encounter as machine operators from time to time. He had a little trick for catching out groundworkers who were not pulling thier weight. He used to leave his machine running at full revs and sneak around the back of the houses to catch them out which sometimes didn't go down too well with the lads but it used to make me chuckle seeing him up to his antics!

I had a good year and half with J.M.Smyth until his workload dropped off and it became clear it was time to move on once more.

Next stop for me was Fareham based Brian R Wilson (Porchester) Ltd, where I was employed operating one of their Mitsubishi MS140 machines I worked on various housing sites around Hampshire and when their own workload was slack I was often put out on hire. One memorable job was digging out the approach roads for the Rudmore Flyover next to the ferry terminal entrance in Portsmouth.

I thought the MS140 which at the time were sold in the UK by the then Caterpillar dealers H. Leverton was a fantastic machine, smooth hydraulics, and plenty of speed and power too, the machine was similar to this example taken in America.

The plant and transport controller at Wilson's was a good lad called Barry Knight who later went on to work for Gracelands civil engineeering and is still there to this day.

Barry often put me out on hire to Gracelands and that was to be the start of my good relationship with the successful groundworks company.

The next company I was to work for was Swanwick Construction Ltd from Botley nr Southampton where I was to stay for over 9 years but more on that in the next installment..