Dude, where's my wheel?

Rear dumper on side

Another interesting one. That's a pretty flat bench he's managed to fall over on. Gravity is obviously not the friend of these rear dumpers.

Wheel Chock

It's lucky that light vehicle was there, or that Caterpillar 777 might have driven over the edge of that wall!

Sunk Barge

An excavator on the barge makes a good dredger, but someone's going to have to dig him up from the bottom of the dam.

Poor Dismount

Good performance, but he's going to lose points for the poor dismount. This photo comes from the Curragh mine in Blackwater, Queensland.

edit: May '09 - Additional Photo

Broken Axle

This broken axle on this rear-dumper is going to make it hard to get it back to the workshop.

Pothole

That's a pretty big pothole he's managed to get himself stuck in.

PAMA Incident

These photos are from the PAMA mine in Indonesia.

Another Rolled Rear Dumper

What is it with rear-dumpers and their proclivity for rolling over?

Hung-up on the wall

Bad.


Very Bad.


Oh, shit.


Another serious contender for 'luckiest bastard of the year'.

Edit: 2/11/2008 - Received some extra photos of this incident during the week.

Dragline Recovery of Dozer

This is a novel way to recover a dozer which has fallen onto its side in a hole. However, it would also be pretty expensive, given what draglines are worth per hour. Unless it was impeding dragline operations, it would be much cheaper to get in a crane to do this job.

Edit: As pointed out by a keen-eyed reader, these are actually separate incidents. The first two photos are from an incident on his site. The three photos with the dragline are a separate incident.

These first two photos are from an incident in which a dozer fell into a hole while cleaning out the base of the ROM to gain access to the Hoppers. It was recovered by a 300t crane.



If you look at the photos above and below, you can see the difference in the ripper shank arrangement. This incident occured in the Hunter Valley.

Stuck Shovel

This shovel has got itself stuck into a good ditch. The operator must have forgotten that his treads weren't pointing the same direction that he was.

Kicking the Air

At least it makes underbody inspections a lot easier.

Hanging Treads

This excavator is going to have to do a bit better in the surf if he ever wants to go to Bell's Beach.

Edit 22-6-2013: Additional Photos

Landslip

Rocks from the Heavens

These photos are from the Coppabella coal mine in Queensland. It looks like the excavator was caught underneath a collapsing highwall, and was severely damaged by the rock coming down on it. Another very lucky operator. This would probably be a write-off.

Norwich Park bench failure

These photos are only a few weeks old. The dragline here from the Norwich Park mine in Queensland has had its bench fail underneath it. Sometimes benches will fail slowly, but this one happened only over the course of a few seconds. The operator only had just enough time to jump off the dragline before it fell to its current position, and it's lucky the bench didn't collapse further. Amazingly, there was no significant damage to the dragline.






[ Edit 9/12/2008: Picture of dragline operator removed by request. I didn't realise until I saw the comments below that he wasn't wearing his PPE (I was a bit distracted by the dragline). I have no wish to embarrass him, so I've removed the pictures. ]

Unsecured dragline bucket

The local council isn't going to like this... Due to their large weight (about 70 tonnes for this bucket), dragline buckets don't usually need to be secured when on the back of a truck, but this photo would argue otherwise.