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I was fighting my ladder pump for a month before a deckhand pointed out my mistake
So I've been running a 10 inch cutterhead on the Mississippi near Baton Rouge, and for weeks I couldn't get my production rate above 80 cubic yards an hour. The ladder pump just kept bogging down, and I was sure the impeller was worn or the suction was bad. I was checking everything but the obvious. Yesterday, a new deckhand, a kid named Leo, was watching me run the controls and just said, 'Hey boss, your swing speed looks really fast.' I slowed it down on the next pass, and just like that, the pump stopped struggling. I was swinging so quick I was basically just fanning the material away from the cutter instead of letting it feed in. Felt like a total rookie move, but man, what a difference. Anyone else ever get so focused on the machine you miss the simple stuff?
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