I spent a crisp early April evening sitting outside on my deck wondering about topics for this article. I reflected on the successful training season we just finished at the facility I work at, amounting to roughly 200,000 training hours without a serious injury. I thought of a recent social media post from my friend Jim Smith at Fleming College, saying that he too is finishing up with a class of future drilling professionals. Both our programs have the same goal in mind: to provide the safest, best-trained workers to the drilling industry. Then, the idea came to me. Drillers understand the dangers of drill rigs and pump hoists, but does the list of machines drillers could utilize in a day stop there?
Obviously, the answer is no. Drillers utilize just about any type of heavy equipment you can think of depending on the task at hand. Every driller I’ve met (including myself) is the best driller they know, and most consider themselves good machine operators. However straightforward you find running a backhoe, skid steer or loader, one device common to all machine types that causes a lot of injuries and deaths when neglected is the “quick coupler.”
Quick coupling devices allow the machine to easily change attachments, from a bucket to forks for example. The machine and attachment combinations seem endless. Some of the common attachments, like buckets, jibs, personnel platforms, grapples, brooms and hammers, allow us to repurpose the equipment we operate in moments. Machine operators need to understand proper use and operation of the connection device to prevent unfortunate situations.