Heavy Equipment

The other day my husband came home from work and a very good mood. He excitedly showed me the new card he had in his wallet. This card said that he was qualified to run heavy equipment. I’m not sure what it is about men and heavy machinery, but they seem to love it. You can see this when you drive by a construction site and your husband’s eyes light up as he stares at the large crane, or perhaps the large dump truck he sees there. I cannot explain it, but perhaps that is because I’m not a man.

Heavy equipment has been used for decades to aid in construction. You cannot go by a construction site without seeing all sorts of different machines either sitting around or being used. It makes sense that heavy equipment is necessary, especially in road construction. If you have ever seen what this equipment can do, you know that there may be no other way to do it. If large pieces of iron had to be lifted by hand without the aid of heavy equipment, overpasses may never be built. If we did not have large machines to move earth and materials, many of the projects which wrap up in a few years, may never have been finished, or may never have been envisioned in the first place.

There is currently construction going on near me. They are using heavy equipment to completely reroute traffic were to interstates meet. Because there was a traffic light on one of the interstates, traffic was slow, and there would often be problems with accidents. In order for the interstate to remain an interstate, the light had to be removed, and a series of on and off ramps had to be constructed. The construction has been going on for almost two years now, and there is no shortage of heavy equipment on the scene.

They tell me it will be another year before the new road is completely finished. Without the help of heavy equipment, this project may have taken 10 years. Though my husband does not work at road construction, he still likes to look at the pieces of heavy equipment he sees when we go by. Most of what he uses for his job is smaller than what we see for road construction. That doesn’t mean he isn’t excited about his new license, and won’t take advantage of having it every chance he gets.

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