Grease pencil marks on the hook block, my new pre-shift habit

Union inspector flagged my rig last month because the load line indicator was hard to read from the cab, so I started marking the hook block with a grease pencil at the start of every job. Just one quick line at the zero point, saves me probably 5 minutes of fiddling with the drum counter each morning. Anyone else do something similar before getting called out?

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1 Comment

logantaylor20d ago

That grease pencil mark is doing more harm than good if you ask me. You're marking the zero point on the hook block, but the load line indicator still needs to be checked from the cab, so you're just eyeballing it from a spot that's covered in grease and wear. A mark on the block doesn't tell you anything about how the wire rope is sitting on the drum or if the clutch is slipping. The inspector flagged you for a reason, and adding another layer of visual guesswork just gives them another thing to question. You've traded five minutes of drum counter fiddling for a habit that's not any more accurate, and now you're relying on a mark that can get smudged halfway through the shift. The counter might be slower, but at least it's numbers, not a crayon line.