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Just learned something wild about the old dredge in the harbor near my town | Dredge Operators - Guest Forum

umaf20•6mo ago

Just learned something wild about the old dredge in the harbor near my town

I was reading through some old port authority records online last night, mostly out of boredom. I found a maintenance log for the harbor dredge from 1978. The thing that blew my mind was the fuel consumption. That old bucket ladder machine used to burn through 80 gallons of diesel an hour just idling at the dock. I always knew the older gear was thirsty, but seeing that number in black and white really put it in perspective. My current cutter suction rig sips maybe 25 gallons an hour when we're actively cutting. It makes you appreciate the engineering leaps we've had in the last few decades, even if the basic job is the same. I wonder if any of the older guys here ever ran one of those old bucket ladders and what that fuel bill looked like at the end of a week?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_gray6mo ago

Yeah my grandpa used to work on a steam-powered dredge back in the 50s, he said they'd shovel coal by hand for hours just to build up a head of steam to even start moving. Can't imagine the logistics of keeping that thing fed.

james9954mo ago

Hang on though, @park.blake, that's a good point but the fuel thing isn't just about saving a few gallons. Those old bucket ladders had a fixed digging speed and no way to adjust power to the load, so they burned full throttle even when they weren't digging hard. @the_gray, your grandpa's steam dredge sounds like a real beast, but at least with steam you could bank the fire and save fuel when you weren't moving. On a diesel bucket ladder, if the engine was running you were burning 80 gallons an hour, no matter if you were idle or digging rock. That's not just thirsty, that's wasteful by any standard.

park.blake6mo ago

Hold on, you're missing the point. Those old machines were built to last a hundred years, not to save a few gallons of fuel. My uncle ran a bucket ladder and that thing dug in conditions that would stall a modern rig cold. They were simple, strong, and you could fix them with a wrench and a hammer. Today's gear has computers that fail if they get damp. Sure, it burned fuel, but it moved mountains without ever calling the shop. That's real efficiency.