Overheard a site manager talking about a near miss, check your rigging logs

I was grabbing coffee near a job site in Tulsa last Tuesday and heard two guys going over an incident report. One said the load shifted at 40 feet because the sling angle was misread off a worn tag. The takeaway for me was that we all trust those tags way too fast, especially after a few weeks of sun and grease making them faded. I went back to my own crane and spent 20 minutes verifying every sling and shackle rating with a magnifying glass. Has anyone else caught a misprint or worn label on their gear that could have put them in a bad spot?

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andrew69314d ago

Hang on, did they say the tag was misread or worn? Because those are two different problems. If the tag is faded and the angle numbers are gone, that's a damaged tag that should have been replaced before the lift even started, not just a reading mistake. The real issue is that the sling angle was wrong in the first place, and a worn tag is just the excuse they used. I've seen guys blame the tag when the real error was they didn't double check the angle with a protractor or a quick math check. The tag is a backup, not the source of truth. And honestly, if that manager was that relaxed about a 40 foot shift, he should be worried about his whole damn log book, not just the tags.