That’s what you’d call a big hauler. Don’t ask me for specifics; I think it’s a Caterpillar. [Update: Silly me. I know nothing. The photo above is the kids playing on some miscellaneous piece of mining equipment. Okay, it’s a giant loader.] The littlest guy at the bottom is youngest son; climbing the ladder is youngest daughter; and on the platform are their two cousins and uncle.
[The big hauler is below, and it is, as you can see, Lectra Haul. Unfortunately you can’t see the whole thing because the photo was taken indoors and up close.] At the time this photo was taken, it was the biggest dump truck anywhere except for a few used in Russia, but it has since then been surpassed a few times over by others.
Uncle Greg works as a mine electrician for what was, at the time of the photo, the National Steel Pellet mine in Keewatin, Minnesota. Since then, another company’s taken it over, but I know less about that than I do about the truck. All those years when I knew my brother-in-law worked as an electrician at a mine, I didn’t understand that this meant he worked on these trucks. After all, in my experience, electricians wire outlets and change breaker boxes.
On that thrilling evening ten years ago or so, Uncle Greg took us on a tour of the open pit taconite mine where he worked. Not many people get to tour (It takes special arrangements.), so even his own kids were getting their first—and only, I’m betting—tour of their father’s workplace.
What we didn’t know (and neither did Greg) was that his boss and the drivers of those big trucks had planned a surprise for us all. Greg and his visitors got rides in the trucks, two at a time, around to pick up a load and back to dump it.
My husband was more excited than anyone. Kids take experiences like that in stride; so many things are new to them that they can’t distinguish once-in-a-lifetime from just-for-the-first-time. Youngest son was as pleased to be wearing a hard hat as he was to ride in a big dump truck, I’d say.
And the drivers! There aren’t many men who do what they do and these aren’t the sort of trucks you drive in parades, so they were tickled pink to have someone—anyone—to show off to.
Greg, by the way, is the uncle we all think looks just like Jim Croce. I know you can’t see well enough to judge, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
And the Mesabi Range where Greg’s mine is? It’s important for a few reasons. There is, of course, all that iron ore; but it’s also the place that gave us two other good gifts: Bob Dylan and the Greyhound Bus Line.