There's a big construction project going on below my office window. Right n ow, they're digging dirt at one end of the area and trucking it over to the construction site to level the ground. My friend and I, both in our 60's, referred to the machines digging the dirt as "steam shovels" although they haven't been run on steam in the U.S. for probably the last 70-80 years. I guess we just heard our parents call them that from when they were kids and steam was in use.
What's the proper terminology these days? Plain old "shovel" isn't descript ive enough and "diesel shovel" doesn't sound right. Maybe "power shovel" or "excavation shovel"?
It's regional. Tracked machines are "excavators" and rubber-tired tractor-based machines are "backhoes" in my area of the USA.
Technically the tractor-based ones are TLB's or tractor/loader/backhoe. Backhoe is just the attachment on the rear. I think TLB is a common term used in Canada. In England it's common to call them JCB's, a popular brand.
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
Well, I'm 52, so that's not far off, just one digit.
I just realized I haven't found time to have my mid-life-crisis/second- childhood yet, so I'd better get cracking.
Not being in construction, I have no idea about the regional terms. But when I Google for excavators or TLBs in my area of Canada, I get way more hits for "excavator" than I do for "TLB".
Stormin Mormon wrote in news:NQbhu.205009$G93.42359 @fx09.iad:
Or pooping in my flowerbed.
The neighbors have two of those little poop-machines. I catch them in the flowers all summer. They knocked over two of our dahlias, too.
I made a couple of small signs and put them in the flowerbed on sticks, hoping to shame the neighbors into keeping their cats under control, but they totally missed the message.
Wes Groleau wrote in news:l65mcm$c8s$2@dont- email.me:
But I used "international" bathroom signs. Don't cats know "internationalese"?
If I'm using the garden hose and the neighbors aren't looking, I spray the cats. Heh heh heh... They never come near me anymore, but they sure love my flowers.
I think I read about steam shovels in children's books, or the comic strips.. I don't think my parents ever had reason to talk about them.
Maybe toy advertisements and calalogs advertised steam shovels.
I may have found a big one in the woods when I was 6 or 8. I left it there and went back a week later. It was still there, so I figured it was abandoned and I took it home, a block and a half from where I found it. There was a whole block of houses that backed against these woods, and even though I couldn't see the house becase of the trees and brush, I guess I was behind the house with another little boy, who complained that his steam shovel was missing. One or more people had seen me taking it home -- I wasn't hiding anything -- and they called my parents who gave it back when I was out (at school maybe). I was a little embarrassed but not much. He shouldn't have left his toys out all night, much less a whole week. Although now I can see how it happened, and the weather hadn't harmed it. yet.
They don't really look the same anymore. so its reasonable that their name has changed. Steam shovels had what looked like a small dumpster at the end, and it scooped with that. The arm went up and to the rear, where it intersected another arm that went down and to the rear which came out of the front of the steam shovel.
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