Been smacked by a concrete hose a time or two.... Back in the 90's we built a hog confinement building, pump trucks were pretty rare in our area, the contractor doing our barn was somehow affiliated with sun pumping from Minneapolis. Sun was starting a branch in desmoines. They were in the process of moving some equipment down to desmoines ,so they said that they would stop by on their way through and pump our building. They also said that it was one of their bigger pump trucks, and that they would charge the same as the smaller truck.

Good deal, truck shows up, and it's the biggest straight truck I've ever seen, ten axles, the boom had like 160' of reach, can reach the whole building in one shot, a gonculator of immense proportion. They pour the floor with no issues, they had 6 cement trucks in the yard ready to dump, and before they got done with the floor the pumper was waiting for concrete. A week later they were forming the walls up and we found out that the same operator and truck were coming back, cool he was a pretty decent guy.

He wheels the rig in the yard, gets positioned, he's a little early so we shoot the crap with him. He eventually tells us this is his last week with sun, his actual quote was, "if pouring hog buildings is what the concrete pumping gig is in iowa, I told them that they could shove this job up their backsides". He obviously was a little upset about pumping concrete for hog buildings. He musta thought he was gonna be doing residental/commercial work.

So anyway they get to pouring walls, and I watched as they did it, the pumper guy seems to be kinda jerky on the controls, and it seems sometimes he has up and down backwards. Their pouring along and something happens that kinda upsets the flow , and the pumper jerks the control and launches the hose guy up and off the wall. About ten foot into the air, hose guy finally let's go of the hose and falls to earth. Hose guy jumps up and comes running over to the pumper chewing his butt in what I figure was Spanish, and he looks like he's gonna pop him. But the boss and I get between them, resulting in a standoff with each glaring at each other, pumper guy says I've had enough of this crap I'm leaving, so he calls someone to come pick him up, he's gonna leave pumper, concrete and everything there, and just take off.....

So the concrete crew boss knows his boss and gets in contact with him, he calls his pumper guy and eventually gets everything smoothed out, and he finishes the job.

WHEW....