If you landed here wondering what it’s like working construction, what to expect during your first day on a construction site, or even if you’re nervous about your first construction job, then you’re in luck. As is anyone looking for some laughs at my expense.
Today, I’ll be sharing the story of my first job in construction: emergency bridge deck repair. This story will talk a bit about the work itself, but will mainly focus on my personal experience, including what my first day was like,
This story will also give you a better idea about who I am, where I come from, how my construction career began and some core philosophies.
I will be telling the story of the first job I ever had in construction at the ripe age of 18, when I was hired as a seasonal laborer to do nighttime bridge repairs in the greater Boston area.
If you’re interested in a quick clip, the same crew I worked on was featured on National Geographic over the winter of 2008 – just a few months before I started. I didn’t get to be in it 🙁
Anyways! Not only did this job teach me many lessons and give me a swift push towards “becoming a man” as my Dad phrased it, but I learned a lot about how construction projects really operate. I also learned about dealing with the delightful sensations of a dangerous work environment and physical exhaustion. Plus, the most important lesson of all…never quitting!
As a side note, I was given a truly TERRIBLE yet hilarious nickname, which I’ll reveal at some point in this story…
This newsletter will be 50% a humorous recap of a greenthumb kid – who never did construction in his life – joining a crew of savages.
The other 50% outlines the key things I took away from the experience, which have helped me greatly in project management and in my personal life too.
Lastly, I plan to make a video version of me telling this story at some point soon!
Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
- An Opportunity Presents Itself
- When Emergency Bridge Deck Repairs Are Required…
- Bridge Deck Demolition & Repairs: An Overview
- The Nerves Set In…
- Day One: It Begins
- Meeting The Crew
- Showtime: Jackhammering Commences
- Setting Up The Truck
- My First Time in the ‘Sand Bin’
- Finish Line: Day One Is Over
- Day Two: Ouch
- Days Turn to Weeks (More Challenges)
- An Inner Shift Takes Place
- Valuable Lessons Learned
1. An Opportunity Presents Itself
I remember when I got the call.
It was spring 2008, between periods at a UMass hockey game during my freshman year in their engineering program. My Motorola Razr lit up with the little envelope icon on the outer screen. It was a text from my father asking me to call him.
I excused myself from my friends and called him up. He had something interesting to tell me. An opportunity I did not expect, to do something I never considered.
The opportunity involved working for a local construction company over the summer, who was gaining a name for themselves as a successful bridge and highway contractor across Massachusetts.
Their main business focus at that time was building bridges. But they also repaired them. To the tune of $15-20 million in yearly revenue at that time, mostly compressed into the spring and summer seasons.
Most of these repairs are considered emergencies and have very tight timelines to get done, typically in unfavorable conditions.
I was offered an opportunity to work on a crew doing emergency bridge deck repairs. I was 18 years old, and the extent of my construction experienced involved helping my family do random stuff around their houses.
We’ll come back to me in a minute. In the meantime, what exactly are emergency bridge deck repairs, and how are they performed? Let’s walk through the process.
Feel free to skip to section 4 if you prefer!
2. When Emergency Bridge Deck Repairs Are Required
If you know anything about driving in the greater Boston area, you know there’s plenty of repair work needed at any given time. Driving over some MA bridges is like driving on the surface of the moon.
As you can imagine, many of these bridges sit along the major highways that run through Boston and other surrounding cities – carrying with them a massive amount of commuter traffic every morning.
State inspectors monitor these bridges routinely, and the public often calls in about horrendous potholes or raised expansion joints that practically (or literally) give them a flat tire. When bridges get really bad, they need to be addressed immediately under blanket repair contracts.
Closing down part of the highway for an extended period really isn’t an option. Even after the Big Dig – which was supposed to alleviate the city’s congestion – Boston’s traffic can hold its’ own against other major commuter nightmares out there. When I say Boston, I really mean the traffic on any major thru-way within an hour or so of Fenway Park. Including the bridges right next to it.
Closing lanes for days or weeks would (and does) create legendary levels of traffic. It simply isn’t feasible most of the time.
So, the typical procedure involves doing the repair work in one night. In and out. No jobsite. No field office, no ‘lunch’ break…no bathrooms (not joking).
“How does one go about doing that?” – someone, maybe
Let’s briefly outline what bridge deck repairs entail.
3. Bridge Deck Demolition & Repairs: An Overview
As said, bridge deck repairs are emergency in nature.
No established jobsite or anything. The only evidence that work was ever done, is that the roadway is fixed the next morning.
So how it this accomplished?
The company sends out several trucks full of tools, towing behind them a variety of apparatus and equipment.
These trucks carry everything a crew of workers needs to close down a portion of the highway, demolish sections of the bridge at night, put in new rebar, install concrete forms, mix/pour rapid-set concrete and get out of there – all in eight hours or less, or your new tire is free…not.
Generally speaking, we had to be off the road by 4:00 AM before the morning commute starts. So we began at 8:00 PM in kind. In that eight hour window, the following steps are performed:
Establish Lane Closures:
A crew of three guys head out on the road around 7:30 PM escorted by a State Trooper. Their goal is to shut down the lanes we’ll be working in as fast as possible using signs, traffic barrels and cones.
This includes putting out tow-behind arrow boards (those blinking arrows telling you to move left or right) and dropping about a half-miles’ worth of orange barrels and cones upstream of the area we’ll be working.
Lastly, a “mobile impact attenuator”, which is essentially a rack-body truck with a device on the back that absorbs a car crashing into it, is parked in the lane just behind the work area as a protection measure. It’s aptly referred to as the crash truck.
Set Up The Work Area:
Tow-behind light towers are strategically dropped off within the lane closure. The light towers rumble to life with that sweet sound of a diesel engine gug-gug-guggling, and they’re cranked into the vertical position to serve as our main source of light for the night.
Large diesel-powered air compressors, which are also towed into the area, rumble to life too. These will prove integral to the entire process shortly…
Tool trucks will be parked downstream of the crew. These trucks contain the most important tool that is to be wielded: the jackhammer.
Tool trucks also carry a variety of demo saws, pry bars and other hand tools, but the jackhammer and their rubber hoses are the crown jewel.
Demo Time:
With all of the above in place, showtime can begin! The area of work for the evening is indicated by the State’s Field Engineer, and our Super spray paints it out.
As one guy starts saw-cutting the perimeter of these areas, everyone else starts jackhammering. And the jackhammering doesn’t stop until there’s nothing left to remove.
This phase usually lasts at least 4 hours, if not 5 hours or more. Great for the hands and ears, I tell ya.
Debris Removal, Steel Repairs, Formwork:
Once the demo is finished and the jackhammers are put away, the crew splits up. Some continue to rake out the open areas to remove debris– at least in the areas that aren’t a gaping hole all the way through the bridge.
Debris and broken rebar is shoveled into the bucket of a skid steer, which dumps it in the back of a dump truck. Areas are then ‘blown out’ using an air hose to remove any fine debris left that couldn’t be caught with rakes and shovels.
Meanwhile, those with ironworking and carpentry skills replace old rebar and build concrete forms to install beneath the bridge, in anticipation of some fresh concrete getting poured.
Concrete Prep:
While the activities above are happening, the mix truck gets set up.
By calling it a mix truck, it seems to imply a lot more automation than we actually enjoyed.
In reality, a mix truck is either a 10-wheel or 26-wheel truck that carries gravel, sand and pallets of concrete bags.
The sand and gravel is separated into two open-top compartments, somewhere between 2.5-3 feet deep, with a wall running up the middle of the trailer to separate them length-wise.
On top of this dividing wall is a conveyor belt of sorts, which is really just a series of pin rollers sitting between two parallel tracks. Concrete bags are taken off pallets and are stacked either 3-high or 6-high along these tracks and slid down to the end.
Each bag weighs 100 pounds and contains rapid-setting concrete that can be driven on within 30 minutes of pouring it. USG’s ‘Duracal’ was the preferred flavor at the time.
Mixing & Pouring
The concrete process goes something like this:
- A tow-behind, gas-powered concrete mixer is placed at the end of the trailer
- One person stands on the ground next to it. Their duty involves adding water to each mix and cranking the handle when it’s time to dump it. This is a choice job and is far, far easier than what others have to do from a physical standpoint. Thus, it is typically reserved for a more senior guy.
- On the truck:
- One or two workers take (3) bags of cement and smash them onto the top of the mixer, which has a device that splits the bag in half on impact and helps the cement fall into the hopper a lot easier.
- One person shovels gravel into (3) 5-gallon buckets and carries them to the end of the trailer. That stone is also dumped into the hopper.
- Finally, the last worker spends time in the ‘sand bin’. The sand bin is by far the worst place to be during this process. Playing in the sand bin involves filling up (6) 5-gallon buckets of sand at a time and carrying them to the end of the trailer to be dumped into the hopper. Let’s just say, that process repeats itself.
- Once all of these ingredients mixed into a fine concrete stew, the worker on the ground dumps the mix into the front bucket of an awaiting skid steer aka Bobcat.
- While the Bobcat drives over and dumps the concrete into the hole, the people on the truck are already getting the next mix ready.
This process repeats in its entirety anywhere from 25-50 times.
Meanwhile, guys with more seniority use floats and hand tools to smooth out the concrete and make sure it’s flush with the roadway around it. This job is also reserved for foremen and the most senior guys on the crew.
Clean Up:
Once the concrete is poured, the set-up procedure is done in reverse. Tools put away. Compressors and mixers hooked up to trucks. Light towers turned off and hooked up. Loads on trucks secured. Any remaining debris scooped up. Cones and barrels are picked up and stacked in the back of a truck.
Before you know it, the workers, trucks and equipment are gone with the wind. Tomorrow night, they do it all over again!
4. Nervous About Your First Construction Job? Me Too
So anyways, my Dad tells me I have an opportunity to sign on for the summer season if I want it.
Until about two minutes earlier, I was planning to spend the summer working as a waiter at the restaurant I worked in throughout high school. Working with friends and making tips on weekend nights. Having a normal, college summer. Now, I’m offered this out of left field.
Several thoughts crossed my mind at once.
In addition to being very different than the summer I had envisioned, I was intimidated.
I’ll talk about the main reason in a moment. But this job involved working at night, putting in full time weeks, traveling hours from home on some occasions, working at heights. Essentially doing a grown man’s job…
“Can I handle it?”
There were good reasons to ask that question. And a few good reasons to try anyways.
Not only would it give me a chance to make a name for myself in the company, but it paid prevailing wage rates. At the time, this was north of $40 an hour. I didn’t know a single person my age making close to that, nonetheless in the ‘crisis’ period of 2008. It might as well have been a million.
You may be wondering how an 18-year old kid with no experience gets an opportunity like this…
The answer is that this job has a very high washout rate. I personally knew a couple people, or heard of a couple, who tried this job out…
None of them lasted more than a day or two without quitting.
Can’t blame them. It’s not for everyone. If it isn’t the travel, the danger or the working conditions, it’s the pain and exhaustion.
Your body just gets beat the hell up.
Hands, wrists and forearms take a trashing when using a jackhammer for hours at a time, which is made about 10x worse when it gets stuck in rebar.
The lower back is on fire as you repeatedly have to catch the jackhammer when it punches through the deck and starts to drop.
Shins and knees are repeatedly smashed and bruised while maneuvering the jackhammer, its’ weight feeling heavier with each passing hour.
Exposed skin gets nicks and scratches all over from airborne debris, or carrying armfuls of old rebar.
The entire body gets fatigued lifting and setting up 60-120 x 100lb cement bags on the mix truck.
All this is also done on hot summer nights while wearing full PPE, including a fitted dust mask.
…and that’s all before we even start the mix process, which is arguably the worst part.
Having muscle is important, but isn’t enough. You need to be able to go all night long, day after day, week after week, and so on.
So in short, I knew I was in for quite the experience if I said yes.
Despite all my fears and reservations surrounding the complete change of plans, I knew I had to accept. So that’s what I did.
A subsequent phone conversation with the hiring manager made it official.
I still had a couple months of school left, so I kind of forgot about it for the time being. But every so often I would realize that the end of the school year was coming closer and closer, and I’d get a wave of nerves. Before I knew it, my first day was only two weeks away.
5. My First Day In Construction: It Begins…
I had moved back from school to my parents’ house at the end of May 2008, just south of the NH border.
I began staying up until 3-4AM right away, and working my way towards 5AM. I had two weeks to acclimate myself to staying up all night.
With my first day (night) set for Sunday, I headed to the main office on the Thursday before to do a few preparations, in addition to standard HR stuff. This included:
- A basic physical, including a hearing check
- Drug test
- Safety orientation, where I was taught basics of site safety, wearing a harness and a couple other things.
- I was also issued PPE like ear plugs, a few types of gloves, a vest, hard hat, dust screen, glasses and the most important – a custom-fit dust mask with extra filters.
The Safety Director then spoke about the specific hazards we face out there.
Between the darkness, highway traffic, working at heights, vibration injury, lifting heavy things awkwardly, dangerous saws and power tools, flying sparks, falling debris, blunt force impacts, and the ever-beloved physical exhaustion, it turns out that getting an orientation first is the smart thing to do.
Plus, there’s the heat. Summer nights could still be 80-85 degrees F and humid. Which is only exasperated by physically exerting ones’ self in long pants and full PPE. I was told to drink a gallon of water per shift. I was lucky if I drank 6-8 glasses on a good day normally.
I won’t lie, the reality of starting work was hitting me. I was pretty nervous.
I was then introduced to a VP who oversaw all maintenance work, including deck repairs. Let’s call him Mike. Mike started in the field himself around my age and had worked his way up through the company.
Difference is, Mike was built like a tree. 6’2” and at least 250 pounds. As I reached out to shake his mitt of a hand, the Safety Director added that “Patrick’s going to be starting deck repairs next week”.
Mike’s friendly expression morphed into a slightly evil smile, and he uttered a half-joking sinister laugh that communicated both “good luck” and “I know what you’re in for” at the same time.
I headed home to enjoy my last couple days of normalcy with friends, doing the usual summer activities. Which of course went by like a blink.
Sunday was spent at home anxiously awaiting a call from the head Super. We’ll call him JR. He’d be telling me which crew I’ll be on and who to ride in with. Most of the guys were either driving a truck to the location, or riding with someone who is.
As promised, my phone rang to life around 2PM. It turns out that JR is a man of few words. In the way a man running on a few hours of sleep would articulate, I was told I’m going to such and such exit off highway ___, a little less than an hour away.
I was further told to be at the shop by 630 PM and ride in with Brian, who drove one of the tool trucks. It was emphasized that I have to be on time.
Can’t remember the conversation beyond that. He might’ve just hung up.
After getting myself organized, I was ready to drive over for my first night. Preparation consisted of filling up my parents’ old Igloo cooler with a bottle of water, a turkey sandwich that I believe my Mom made, an apple, some Gushers (ha!) and an ice pack.
It also involved me getting dressed. The guys must’ve laughed their asses off when they saw me show up in a crisp white v-neck t-shirt that was a size too big, my Dickies pants and $30 Brahma steel toes from Wal-Mart. I probably looked like I belonged on a construction safety manual for high schoolers.
So off I went. “Give it hell”, my Dad said. A frequent but welcome encouragement that was dished out in the face of any challenge.
With my windows down to breathe in the early June evening, I found myself thinking that the ten minute drive over was going remarkably fast today.
Before I knew it, I was parking my Nissan Sentra amongst a sea of ½ and ¾ ton trucks and an assortment of random cars, ranging from high-end luxury to hoopdies.
Gym bag and cooler in hand, I set out to find Brian. As I walked over, I crossed paths with a tough looking guy sporting a shaved head and tank top; a few black tattoos visible that seemed prison-issue (I was right). I’d guess he was in his early/mid 40s. We’ll call him Bob.
Bob was riding in another truck, but was going to the same destination. Observing that it’s my first day after about two seconds, Bob offered some words of encouragement.
“Well, the first few weeks are gonna suck. A lot of guys quit. But after a month or so your body starts getting used to it” (great!)
“…if you can hang, you’ll make a thousand bucks a week after taxes”.
“Oh right,” I thought, “the money”.
“That’s Brian pulling in right there”, Bob pointed. He remarked that Brian is among the smaller guys on the crew, like me. A quick reminder that I’m 5’8” on my best day and was a distance runner then, weighing 35 lbs less than I do today.
“That’s a relief”, I thought “at least I’m not the only smaller guy out here”. If he can survive it, that’s a good omen.
Brian looked like “Prison Mike“, complete with bandana…if he was 25 years old, a couple shades darker with a fade haircut, and stood at 5’6”, 180 pounds of pure muscle. So much for that omen!
We walked into the vast laydown yard of trucks and equipment – which was at least 500 feet long – in order to find the tool truck.
After passing a slew of rack bodies, old pickups, trucks with platforms and buckets, compressors, tow-behind signs and things I didn’t recognize, we found it.
Several of the tool trucks were quite literally old UPS and FedEx vans bought at auction, with the only modification being to paint them bright red with a company logo on the side.
In the same way a delivery driver would, I slid the door open and climbed in. After a quick diesel stop, we hit the road – driving into a lovely summer evening sunset…
“Oh yeah, you’re in for It”, Brian confirmed, when I asked him what he thinks my first day will be like.
I know he said some other things but I really don’t remember what. Not sure he actually had any words of encouragement now that I think about it, but I generally got a “positive vibe”. So that was nice.
Except for one part. He mentioned how the new guy always has to do the “sand bin”. That if I can handle ending my night in there, that’s a good sign I actually want to be there and “can hang”.
He also explained that almost everyone sucks at it at first and they can’t keep up, but once you master the technique it’ll become easier.
In case you skipped over the deck repair process section above, the “sand bin” is essentially an open-top section of a truck trailer that holds sand. This sand is what’s used to mix the rapid-set concrete we’ll be pouring. Working in the bin involves filling 6 x 5-gal buckets with sand, carrying them, shoveling the sand into a vertical cliff again, and repeating about 25-50-something times.
The company had a few trucks like this, but my first day had something special in store for me: we got to have the 26-wheeler on our job.
This truck-trailer combo was so big and heavy that it had special permits. It required a class-A driver to drive it, and I believe it had 13 gears – my lucky number!
The last 30 feet or so of the trailer was divided in two length-wise, with the compartment on the right taking up 2/3rds of the trailers’ width. This is the sand bin. It was something like 30” deep, seven or eight feet wide and 30 feet long.
In the course of the night, just about all of that sand will become one with the concrete: taken there via shovel, buckets and a lucky pair of hands….but we’ll get to that.
By the time we hit the highway, it was too loud in the box van to talk without yelling. Especially with the sliding windows stuck in the open position. So I basically had the next 40 minutes or so to think about it.
We pulled into the mostly-empty parking lot of a shopping plaza around 730 PM. The crew will rendezvous here until we get the call that it’s time to pull onto the highway.
As I described earlier, the lanes we’ll be working in must be closed down first, using traffic barrels, arrow boards and a State Police detail or two.
When we pulled in, one other truck was already there ahead of us. One of the guys in it was Bob who I met previously. I can’t remember who else was with him. “Whassssssup” was the greeting. It wasn’t long before a few other company trucks pulled in, plus several people in their own cars.
With at least 10 guys there now, we all jumped out.
In my own mind, this next part played out like a movie. These were some of the roughest and toughest looking guys I had ever seen. Despite varying in height, weight and build, they all seemed like they were made out of rock. Including their faces, in some cases.
It was only fitting that they looked exactly like who you’d picture spending their work week turning concrete into pebbles and moving heavy shit around.
6. Meeting The Crew
One guy, who I’ll call Derek, was a former Marine who did a couple tours in Iraq if I remember right. He was only 23 or 24, but a towering wiry guy who despite being somewhat new, was recognized among the toughest and most respected guys. There were several vets between the crews actually. This was 2008, so a lot of those guys were starting to come home from the initial deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Derek was also a guy who encouraged even me despite my obvious initial struggles, which we’ll get into soon.
Another guy was Kurt. Samoan by background, Kurt was only a little older and taller than me but had to be close to 300 pounds, with hands and fingers that made a can of beer look small.
Next was Jason. A mild-mannered guy with a sharp mind, he was one of the more senior guys out there. In his mid thirties with several years behind him, Jason was a guy who was relied on for brains as well as physical effort. He was average height and maybe 175, but had the hands and wrists of someone all too familiar with using a jackhammer for quite some time.
Jason was the type to learn specialty skills, and exchanged some hammer time for things like ironworking, carpentry, truck driving and equipment operation. Several other guys fit in this category.
Alan was a guy who worked in an ultra efficient manner, yet also seemed fearless. I saw him do things at heights that are hard to believe. Walking along narrow beams, or working several stories off the ground in precarious situations etc. At 5’10 and maybe 180, he looked like a cat walking around up on tiny beams while using an air hose to blow out debris. He had a trick to doing everything as well, which I was all too happy to observe.
Caleb, a guy in his mid 20s who was also built like a tree, was another positive influence. The type of guy who looks wiry proportionately, but is still a huge guy due to being 6’3” or so.
Miguel was a positive and charged up guy from the Dominican Republic, I believe. I would later notice that he never seemed to let the exhaustion get to him in terms of spirit, and would still be joking around in the heart of the super hard stuff. This will prove helpful in the later part of the evening.
Then there were the two foremen, Tony and Dan. Both were tough guys in their early 40s who were a bit more refined in terms of managerial skills, but still did their share of the physical work in addition to the other stuff on their plate.
I could go on to describe the rest, but you get the idea.
The last person I’ll mention is Anthony. He looked every bit the part of someone doing demolition. Around 6’ and at least 230 pounds in his later 20s, the dude was a unit. I bring him up because allegedly, he was the only one so far who could hack it in the sand bin on his first attempt.
When I got out of the truck, it was like a record scratched to a stop. Everyone in the saloon turned and looked at me. If Conor McGregor was there, they’d echo his sentiment: who tha fook is that guy?!
The clothes and boots I described earlier inspired one guy to say that I must’ve just come off the rack.
“Did you have to get a permission slip to be here??”
“A jackhammer weighs as much as you!”
What could I do but grin and bear it? The hazing was to be expected. One guy joked that I was Brian’s younger brother, and I think a couple believed it for a while. That might’ve helped.
I’m forgetting the next few minutes of conversation. I do remember that all of a sudden, someone got the call. The lane closure was in place. It was time to start.
There was a noticeable shift in the “vibe” amongst everyone. A seriousness filled the air. The guys hustled to respective trucks and we quickly exited the parking lot in a strategic order.
You might think I’m playing up the seriousness of this job; that the attitude was so intense due to some badassery taking place. But there’s another reason why everyone had a spring in their step…
What we lacked in breaks and bathrooms, we got rewarded for in another way. We got paid for 8 hours no matter how early we finished.
While we did end up working 8 hours more often than not, hustling hard could yield a 7, 6-1/2 or even 6-hour shift for a full days’ pay. This didn’t necessarily mean we did less work. It meant that we did it faster.
There was a very tangible reward for hustling.
7. My First Time Using A Jackhammer…
Just after 8 PM, the sunset had morphed into an orange-pink hue on the horizon, with a dark blue sky to the east. Contrasted with the backdrop was the bright baseball field-esq glow of halogens on the light tower 15 feet in the air.
One thing caught me off guard right away. Everyone just sort of sprung into action. There was no instruction or handholding.
The guys got all their PPE on in about two seconds and were grabbing jackhammers out of the truck in no time, carrying the 90-pound hammer and bit over to one of the massive pink-spraypainted rectangles on the bridge.
Everyone had to set up their own tools. This meant popping in a bit and running 25 or even 50 feet of air hose from the jackhammer back to a compressor nozzle. Every connection had to be secured with a twisted piece of tie wire, including to the jackhammer itself, to make sure hoses didn’t disconnect. It was crucial to hook up your hose to the compressor last – turning it on only after all of that was double checked.
If any connection wasn’t secured, the hose would start whipping around like a cocaine snake. This could quite likely whip someone to the point of knocking them out, or even whip into the traffic driving by 15 feet away.
In case it needs to be stated, I had never done any of this before.
Quitting was so common that the guys didn’t really spend time showing you what to do. It was expected that you do as they do (and try to keep up) and ask a question only when necessary.
In fairness, it wasn’t rocket science. One can easily observe how the set-up is…set up. But actually doing it was another story. It took at least five minutes for an experienced guy to set themselves up. For a new guy such as myself, it was more like 15.
There is a second reason why everyone hustles extra hard to get started. The experienced guys know which hammers are the best, which air hoses are the freshest, and which bits are the sharpest.
Having them of course made working easier. Or from another angle, made it possible to get more done with the same effort.
By the time I got my PPE on, everyone else was at least a step ahead. At that point, I figured it best to let the stampede of guys coming out of the tool truck pass before I jump in there and grab my crappy jackhammer.
You can’t exactly ask a question once the work gets going. Between the jackhammers, which put out volume in decibels equal to a jet taking off, and ear plugs, you literally have to scream into someone’s ear for them to sort of hear you.
But after a bit of monkeying around and getting my hammer set up, I finally joined the huddled group of guys hammering away at one spot. That was the typical protocol; for everyone to start close and branch out.
The hammering was incredibly loud, even with ear plugs. I could feel the bridge deck vibrating beneath our boots from the effort. I depressed the hand trigger on the hammer for the first time, and the jackhammer vibrated to life. “Wow”, I thought. “Just like the cartoons”. Only thing missing was the pogo stick aspect that I half expected to be accurate.
That didn’t last long though. Five minutes turned to 15, then 30. It’s easy to get lost in the monotony of staring at the ground through fogging glasses, trying to make out where the hammer is actually hitting. Or in our case, dropping all the way through the bridge deck – suspended only by the cage of old, rusty rebar left where the concrete used to be. That, and our grip as we catch it.
In this particular instance, the bridge had temporary timber shielding installed between beams beneath the deck. So all of the debris was crashing onto it 3-4 feet below us, rather than falling onto the roadway.
Every time the hammer broke through the bridge deck and I had to “catch” it, the burn in my lower back increased. It happened too many times to keep track of.
After an hour or so, my hands began to fatigue. The vibration of the jackhammer wasn’t too bad to bear when it broke through the concrete smoothly, but got intense when the bit would get jammed in the rebar or stuck somehow. All of the vibration would transfer into the body rather than the ground until it broke free.
My glasses were completely fogged, and any exposed skin was caked with a fine layer of dust that clung to sweaty skin. The hammer continued to drop through the deck, which would trigger that ever-familiar lower back burn again and again.
Sweat began to accumulate in my respirator…and gloves, socks, underwear…everywhere. My pants were stained wet from the freezing condensation spraying out of the small gap between the end of the air hose and where it connects to the hammer.
My forearms felt like they were on fire. We had been jackhammering for well over an hour with no sign of slowing down. The guys in the group had separated into two sides across the ever-increasing opening we created in the bridge. I could only see them through a thick layer of dust, accentuated by the beam of light cast down from the light tower – like the light from the window in The Exorcist.
The easiest way to cope was to get lost in the rhythmic process of setting the heavy hammer, pressing down on the hand brake, guiding it into the concrete and anticipating the drop. Take a small step back and repeat ad nauseam.
I’d occasionally bump elbows with one of the guys next to me, or get pinched between the handlebars of the hammers. Solid steel would bump into knees, shins and soft tissue, causing a slight grimace or shot of pain every time that was invisible through respirators, dust and ear-splitting noise.
It had to be two hours into the shift by now, with no sign of slowing. It was easy to forget that traffic was cruising by 15-20 feet away, separated only by orange barrels.
Guys would occasionally step away and grab a sip of water, wolf down some food, smoke a cigarette (if that’s their thing) and get back to it. I followed suit and downed 3-4 glasses of water in what felt like world record pace. The same could be said for whatever food I brought.
After a couple hours, I could feel myself struggling to keep up. Everything burned. I swear to God, my ankles and feet even felt tired. My forearms were pumped so full of blood that they were practically immobile. The guys across the hole from us were now 40 feet away. A few guys branched off and were hammering other smaller locations in the next lane over.
8. Setting Up The Truck
It was then I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was one of the foremen. “Hey!!”, he screamed over the noise. “Go help load the truck!”.
I realized that the trucks had been rearranged behind me without noticing. The tool truck had been pulled forward, and the massive open top semi-trailer had been backed up closer.
Even walking 50 feet away from the action made the noise noticeably less abrasive. The trailer was also shrouded in semi darkness, being a bit further away from the light tower. It was nice to be out of sight…for a moment.
First of all, the physical exhaustion began to hit me. Despite conditioning myself to get on a nighttime schedule, the body’s natural desire to rest hit me hard. My T-shirt was soaked in sweat, let alone everything else. I didn’t realize I had accumulated a few scrapes and scratches in all the fun we were having.
Hands aching, forearms immobile and lower back on fire, I realized what loading the truck would entail.
Me and another guy were going to spend the next God-knows how much time lifting, carrying and stacking 100-lb bags of Duracal cement onto the not-so-conveyor belt and at the end of the trailer. So that’s what we did. Stack ‘em three high on an old cut-up piece of plywood or safety sign, slide it down and repeat.
I swear the bags kept getting heavier. Getting that third bag to the top of the stack involved a multi-step process of hoisting it to waist-level, getting a knee under it and then effectively gorilla-humping it up to where it needs to be. Then, climbing up into the famous sand bin next to the conveyor to arrange it neatly, slide the 300-lb stack down, and continue on.
In the darkness, I had no idea what time it was. Midnight? The parade of pissed off drivers stuck in traffic had slowed to an occasional car flying through the work zone at near-highway speeds. It was then that I heard something I hadn’t heard in a bit: silence.
All of the hammering stopped, leaving behind it sounds of miscellaneous hand tools and chatter.
Turns out, it was actually about 1:30 in the morning. 2 ½ hours to go. I spent the next hour or so shoveling miscellaneous debris, bringing new rebar from the truck out to be installed, and doing random cleanup.
I knew that I was going to be tossed into the sand to end the night, so I was trying to conserve any energy any way I possibly could. But at that point, even carrying jackhammers into the truck and putting away air hoses felt grueling.
Much like how fast a red light turns green when you wish it could’ve lasted longer, it was soon time to start the mixing process.
9. My First Time In The Sand Bin…
Me and several of the guys were told to get on the truck, and I was handed a short handled shovel. This will be my primary tool other than my two hands and 5 gallon buckets for the next hour or more.
I swear I’m not imagining it when I say the guy that handed me the shovel had a sinister grin. I think they were all going to enjoy watching me suffer in there.
I was given some basic instructions. Fill up the 6 x 5 gallon buckets with sand. Bring them to the edge of the trailer. Shovel the face of the sand into a vertical wall, and wait for the buckets to be thrown back to me. Before I knew it, the guy on the ground fired up the mixer which belched out the smell of fuel and old dust. The Bobcat was now waiting at the edge of the trailer. It was time to start.
I shoved the buckets into the face of the sand and began using my hands as a shovel of sorts, holding them together and pushing the sand down, so it would fall into the buckets neatly. I did this as fast as I could and before I knew it, I had all six filled up.
Since the sand bin was full and I was so close to the edge of the trailer, I didn’t have to carry the buckets far. I just turned around and set them behind me. A couple of guys were smashing the 100 pound bags of concrete onto the hopper while others were dumping the sand buckets in there. I almost forgot that I had a compatriot working on the other side of the barrier, doing the same thing I was but with gravel. They only had to fill up three buckets, though. A promotion.
This isn’t so bad, I thought, given that I built it up in my mind. But one round of mixing turned into another, and then another, and then another. Soon, I found that everyone is waiting on me. I was still filling up my buckets when everyone else had already dumped gravel and concrete into the hopper, and I was absolutely “cooked” in terms of energy. The Bobcat was waiting for me to finish – it’s idle, steady position implying that I was the only one holding up the operation.
“Wooo!”
It was Miguel. Noticing my slowing pace and grimace carrying the buckets, he decided to offer some words of encouragement. Or rather, a word.
Although he wasn’t in the sand, he was still working hard. Lifting and dumping buckets of sand. Picking up and opening the heavy bags of concrete. Clearly in a full sweat, soaked like me and most of the rest, he still had that enthusiasm in him.
It was something that doesn’t seem that significant now, but in the heat of suffering at the age of 18 – on my first day no less – noticing how someone can force themselves to be positive amongst hardship is a lesson that stuck with me.
Another lesson that stuck was how important it was to keep the sand vertical. When it is, you can stand the bucket up at the base of the sand cliff and let gravity do the work, allowing sand to easily fall in there rather than having to scoop it. But as the mixing continued, the vertical wall I was supposed to maintain turned into a day at the beach, except horrible.
I had no cliff anymore, but rather a gradual incline and a bunch of sand all over the floor of the truck. It was taking me incredibly long to fill up all the buckets, and the pressure was on for me to do it even faster despite my fatigue and clear lack of technique.
I eventually just couldn’t keep up anymore. We had to have done at least 25 mixes at that point, and I was absolutely spent. It felt like the second I filled up all those buckets, the Bobcat was already waiting for me to do it again. This left no time to shovel the wall of sand to a vertical face, which just made the next mix even harder.
Seeing my obvious distress, Anthony climbed up onto the trailer. As I said earlier, he’s the only guy anyone could remember who could blow through the sand bin on his first day. It only stands to reason that his nickname was Sandman.
Anthony was a guy who looked like Ben Affleck from Goodwill Hunting, except with a shaved head. “I’m only gonna do this for ya once, buddy”, as he proceeded to shovel the sand into a vertical wall in remarkably quick fashion. I can see where the nickname comes from.
That was a welcome reprieve. Filling up the buckets actually felt somewhat easy again, despite the fact that I was completely exhausted.
My muscles were beyond sore. They had taken on a deep, searing ache. My entire body felt like it endured a car crash. I never realized how sore ones’ hands could get before this experience.
Although I was able to fill up the buckets and maintain a semblance of a vertical face in the sand, I quickly lost it again. At that point, most of the bin was empty. Every time I needed to carry the six buckets of sand to the edge of the trailer, I was walking a little bit further than the prior round, leaving next to no time to shovel it vertical.
I once again found myself playing in the sandbox, trying to fill up the buckets horizontally rather than vertically. We had to have done 40 mixes by then, or it certainly felt like it. Seeing that we were going to be there for a lot longer if I was left in the bin, Anthony took my place. I was told to just carry buckets back-and-forth and help break concrete bags over the hopper.
The concrete mixer was open top as explained earlier, and it spat out a little globs of concrete every time it completed a rotation. So you’d quite literally end up with little clumps of concrete on your skin, clothes and even in your hair.
“I’m dying”, I thought. My entire body was just utterly spent. Between the change in working hours, adrenaline from the pressure of my first day and not knowing what I was doing really, I felt myself crashing.
“Woooo!” Miguel said again. I think I found it in me to smile for a second.
10. Finish Line: Day One Is Over…
Somehow by the grace of God, we reached the end. The majority of the sand that was in the bin was gone, and the massive openings we created in the bridge deck were filled with fresh concrete
I honestly don’t remember much of the rest of the night after that. I vaguely remember helping clean up, secure the trucks, and do odds and ends.
But I do remember feeling like I had never been that tired of my entire life. I know that I more or less sucked in terms of performance, but I was happy that I made it through the whole night without quitting. Something a lot of people couldn’t say.
“Where are we meeting tomorrow?” I asked JR. He seemed genuinely surprised that I was asking. I’m sure he thought I was going to quit. But with an amused smirk on his face, he told me to meet the same guy at the shop, and we’ll do it all again tomorrow. Or should I say, later that day.
I remember being strangely wired on the ride back, despite the fact that everything hurt. I was so tired that my body didn’t want to work, but the adrenaline didn’t want to let me actually sleep either.
I vaguely remember getting back into the car and driving home under the glow of a lovely early morning sunrise. Just before I did, I heard footsteps behind me.
“What’s up, kid??!” It was Derek the Marine. “You made it. How ya feeling?”
We exchanged a few words and then he said, “Yessir! That’s what we do. See you later”. That little bit of encouragement counted for more than he probably realized.
Once home, I remember taking all my clothes off outside. It was then that I saw my own reflection in the glass of our garage window. I looked like I had crawled out of the center of the Earth. I had dust in my hair and eyebrows, plus all over my face and arms. My shirt and pants were absolutely covered in debris and drops of concrete. My cheap work boots already looked like they were used for a month, and it looked like someone dumped cooking flower all over my head.
I walked into the house in just my underwear and took a shower. Thankfully our downstairs bathroom was just inside the back door. My God, did the hot water feel good. It felt like it was a warm blanket on my body after being absolutely exhausted. Bits of concrete could be felt being broken down by the shampoo.
Can’t remember if I even ate anything before going upstairs and passing out. By the time I went to bed it was at least 6 AM, and the sun was cascading into the windows…until I closed the shades and turned my room into a cocoon. I woke up 9 ½ hours later.
11. Construction Labor Soreness Is No Joke…
When I first got out of bed, I felt like I slept for 1,000 years. My body straight up didn’t want to work. I had to roll over to get my legs out of the bed. It was then that hit me, that I couldn’t move my hands. They literally felt like they were concreted into one fixed, curled, semi clenched shape.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I needed to run them under warm water for a minute to get them to relax and start working correctly. I assume it was lactic acid build up. This became my wake-up ritual for the next few months.
I then stumbled downstairs and ate just about everything I could get my hands on. I only had three hours until I needed to be back at the shop to do it all again.
But in the meantime, I was hurting. Everything either felt sore, or hurt. IcyHot was a saving grace, but it only does so much. It was at that point that I questioned if I can continue on. Not sure if it was out of sheer exhaustion, or out of mental unwillingness.
But somehow, someway, I knew I needed to. Making it through day 1 is just the initiation. It’s the weeks and months that count…and pay!
I managed to get dressed again, prepare for the next evening and get myself over to the shop.
Much of the next several nights, and even several weeks, were more or less interchangeable with this description I’ve already given with the exception of the location, so I won’t elaborate too much.
I will say that by that first weekend, I had actually lost weight despite doing so much physical work and eating as much as I could. I think I weighed myself and was under 140 pounds at that point. Doing that type of work in the heat, you legitimately sweat out more than you can drink.
No amount of water you drink is too much, and most of what you drink is not enough. Same with food, it felt like no matter what I ate, I was always hungry and tired. As Miguel said at one point “boy you gotta eat BIG! Double cheeseburgers!”
I now intimately understand why many who work a physical job, especially hard labor, eat such dense, high-calorie food all the time. It’s not an option, but a requirement.
12. Days Turn To Weeks (More Challenges)
The weekend flew by like a dream. A beautiful, painful dream.
I felt normal again…with the exception of feeling like my entire body was broken.
I got to catch up with friends and actually have a normal summer for 48 hours. It was almost enough to forget that on Sunday night, while my friends were going out to dinner or hanging out, I would be gearing up to do it all over again. And that’s what I did
The following several weeks were basically a blur, full of hilarity and mistakes. Struggling to cut a straight line in the bridge deck using the massive cut off saw, and having the guys laugh their asses off. It looked like a strip of bacon. If the cuts I made were the equivalent of a sobriety test, I would’ve been arrested.
We also did full depth repairs with no shielding under the bridge. Meaning that once the hole is open, you’re looking at the roadway below, rather than lumber a few feet under us.
The foreman told me to go out and ‘clean the beam’. That consists of walking out over the old, existing rebar cage with a jackhammer, and hammering off all of the remaining loose debris sitting on the exposed beam, or stuck between the bars. I legitimately thought he was joking when he told me to do it at first. He wasn’t.
It felt like it took me 15 minutes to walk out across the rebar with the 90-lb hammer in tow. I could see the roadway 25 feet below me, which made the Bobcat cleaning the debris down there look like a toy.
The next part literally involved jackhammering the top of the beam. It’s amazing how strong steel really is – this did zero damage to the top flange I was standing on. When I felt I had removed as much debris as I could, I would take a tiny step backwards. I knew that I had a long way to go, and this is going to take forever. But each step I took back get me slightly closer…
Except for one thing: it didn’t. At least at first. The guys behind me were still hammering away. Each step I took a step backwards along the beam, was matched with them taking a step back as they removed another section of the bridge.
I’m not going to lie, I was kind of freaking out up there. But somehow, someway, not quitting and pressing forward when I really didn’t want to was what got me to the end.
Speaking of not wanting to, my lower back was screaming at me. It legitimately felt like somebody poured gasoline on my lower back and set it on fire, or filled my lower spine with battery acid. That’s how much it was burning from doing this particular task.
Although I was getting more conditioned, my body was taking a beating from the consecutive weeks of work. I simultaneously always felt tired, but always had to dig deeper and find another gear. I learned that the fatigue hits a plateau, where it doesn’t really get any worse. It just levels off there.
That’s when it hit me: most people quit before they ever reach that point. Like me, everyone else assumes that it’ll just keep getting worse in a linear fashion. But it does eventually level off.
As the weeks went on, I continued to make plenty of mistakes. Such as stepping in wet concrete when we’re 15 minutes away from being done. The guys didn’t find that quite as amusing as my cut off saw skills.
13. Developing Metal Toughness In Construction
No matter how hard I worked, I always felt like I was a weak link in the chain slowing everyone else down.
Until something shifted. It happened the night following the incident of me stepping in wet concrete as I was carrying old rebar. I had been working on the crew for about seven weeks and was completely sick of being the weakest guy out there.
That afternoon, I woke up with a determination. I didn’t care if I had to crawl to the end, I was not going to be the weak link that night. And I wasn’t. I attacked every task given to me with blatant disregard of the little voice in my head telling me I couldn’t push harder. I honestly didn’t think about the tasks that came later. I just went all-in on each thing I’m doing, one task at a time.
And you know what? By saying “screw it” in my mind and just going for it, it actually got easier. There was no more inner resistance or chatter. Just me in a state of no-mind, going until I’m done (dual meaning intended).
Before I knew it, I was staring down my old nemesis for the nth time…the sand bin.
I attacked that damn pile of sand with vigor. At this point it was personal. It was no longer about work or even keeping up really. This was about reputation. Ha! But really.
All’s I know is I crushed it that night. Granted I was much more conditioned vs when I started, but flipping that mental switch and just going for it is key!
“Hey! Pat flew through the sandbin tonight!”, one of the guys said.
“Yeah I saw that!” replied Alan. “Nice work”.
I couldn’t believe my ears. Was I being treated like a person? Did I just get a legitimate ‘atta boy? After hanging in for seven weeks, I proved that I can actually hang. It was an awesome full circle moment, when I realized I overcame an obstacle that I truly thought I couldn’t handle. I hung in through pain, discomfort, mistakes and newbie hazing without quitting. It made all of the trials over the prior several weeks worth it.
That’s one the of moments that I know many, many others are capable of reaching: accomplishing things they never thought possible through a simple combination of refusing to quit, positivity, pushing themselves past comfort, and breaking things down into bite-sizes pieces. That’s it. No magic formula. But, a guarantee to success.
Oh, I almost forgot. My nickname.
Like I said, I showed up on day 1 looking like I was a teen in a construction safety manual. I was younger than everyone else on the crew by at least five years, except one other college kid. Some of these guys were in their mid 30s to early 40s.
“Man, Pat’s barely legal out here. Here’s practically still in Pampers!” the guys laughed unusually hard, and the word spread fast.
Pampers. My nickname was Pampers.
14. lessons Learned From My First Construction Job
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story, and feel free to let me know if you’d like more content like this.
I figure It’s worth jotting down a short list of lessons I took away from my first construction experience as an endcap to the story.
i) Take an opportunity when it comes, even if it’s scary. Life moves fast, and we only get a handful of opportunities to do things that define our story. I think if our gut says to go for it, say yes before you have the chance to overthink it!
ii) Construction is hard work. Working in this industry requires strength and endurance, in uncomfortable environments – often far from home – and handling discomfortable while upholding performance. The essential workers deserve a big shout out all around for what they do for society!
iii) Attention to detail is extremely important. This goes for both our safety practices and actual work. Something as simple as setting up a jackhammer and hose in an incorrect order, or forgetting to secure the connections with wire, can result in serious issues and injury. Attention to detail is key.
iv) Work smarter, not (just) harder. I quickly learned that strength means nothing without the ability to rely on it day in, and day out. Nailing down techniques and learning to work efficiently is one of the best investments one can make.
v) PPE is really important! Hard hats prevent that piece of falling debris from killing us, when shoveling rubble under the bridge. Dust masks with filters prevent us from breathing in toxic debris that can give us silicosis or worse. Ear plugs keep our ears functioning. I remember when I had an earplug fall out on me when we were all hammering away. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the ear with a screwdriver for the two seconds it took to cover my ear with my hand. Harnesses….speak for themselves. PPE literally saves our bodies.
vi) The best kind of work is the type with a tangible reward. When we knew that we got paid for eight hours no matter how fast we were, it gave us tangible incentive to work harder. Having a direct payoff for our efforts make work a lot more appealing and easier to excel in. I prefer to work for a pre-determined payoff whenever possible.
vii) Never, ever quit.
Appreciate you reading. If you’re interested in any 1-on-1 construction coaching or mentorship, you can book a 30 or 60 minute Zoom session with me! Please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments.
