Heavy Equipment Jobs, Dangerous Jobs Stories, & OSHA Blind Spots

Posted by: admin on August 12, 2025

Exclusive Interview with Founder of CertifyMe

Hear about never before told stories about dangerous jobs and OSHA secrets.

Video Transcript

Nate
Okay, question one. What was your first job in the heavy equipment industry?

Tom
Okay.

Tom
My first job in the heavy equipment industry was working for my dad. I’m driving big forklifts and occasionally I could pull a big crane around to the wash rack and I kind of got to run the wash rack in the summertime and got to operate all the equipment, starting from when I was literally like 12 or 13.

Nate
Wow. So is not OSHA compliant to have a 13 year old on a forklift.

Tom
No, and big ones. mean, you know, we had a 36,000 pound Hyster and I could just barely see over the steering wheel and just barely reach the pedals. And dad was like, yeah, you’re fine. You can drive the little one. You can drive the big one. Just don’t hit anything.

Nate
Dang, yeah, I’ve seen those hysters. Those are the ones with the big dualies on the front.

Tom
Yeah, yeah, exactly. it had a big mast and, know, big long forks and was friggin’ gigantic.

Tom
They’re they’re they’re pneumatic tires are just regular truck tires and most of them But they do make them with with cushion tires that are that’ll pick up you know like 60,000 pounds I Was just talking to an old crane buddy of mine I had lunch with on Monday. We were talking about those they’re called a versa lift And they made them so the counterweight would you can push a button and it would slide backwards and make that it would extend the center of gravity backwards Rear of the left with a big giant counterweight and you could adjust that you know the size of the machine and the capacity of the machine by moving this giant counterweight that’s really a cool machine and There’s not many of them around but they’re very very handy for creating and regaining moving machinery and stuff like that

Nate
Wow, yeah, see the, I’m looking at pictures of them. They’re really cool looking. That’s super cool.

Dang. Okay. So that was your first job in the heavy equipment industry when you were literally a teenager.

Tom
I think I may have been pre-teen.

Nate
Wow. Okay, and then what was your first, what was the first business you started in the heavy equipment industry?

Tom
And the heavy equipment industry was DMX. But the first ever business I ever started was a tree trimming business. Palm tree trimming. Climbing up with the spikes like the poles, the telephone poles, and doing stupid things and climbing all the way to the top. And that was at my dad’s suggestion. He always thought that those guys did pretty well and made a lot of money in a short amount of time if you’re willing to climb to the top of a palm tree and trim it.

Nate
Yeah, I remember you saying like your buddies would work all week and you would work like one Saturday and have the same payout.

Tom
Yeah, like literally one Friday afternoon, I could go out and knock on doors and hustle and say, hey, can I trim those trees and get the job, do the job and be done with it by five or six o’clock on a Friday and make 300 bucks in a few hours. And those guys would work like two weeks part time to make 300 bucks. Yeah.

Nate
Yeah. That’s wild. And then, can you tell the bee story?

Tom
Oh, when the wasps got me. That was a horrible one, That was the last tree I ever trimmed, actually. It was a pretty big one. And it wasn’t one of the tall, skinny ones. It was one of the bigger, round ones, and it had a pretty big beard on it. The beard is all that dead stuff that hangs down the bottom. There’s probably a name for it or whatever, but it can be dangerous when those things fall. A lot of times tree trimmers like me will get killed because they’ll up underneath that stuff and then it’ll just slide down the trunk of the tree. It’ll just take off in just one big chunk and slide down and smother the guy and he can’t get out and they suffocate. It happens regularly.

Anyway, I was up there hacking away and I pushed to the side and they were all dead and dried so I had a Corona 42 inch saw that folds out to 42 inches, big curved really sharp saw. And I put my elbow right into a wasp nest. And the wasp nest, they came out, they got mad, they nailed me the arm and then in the elbow.

and on my wrist and on my hand and on my forehead and on my face and the last one that I remember it landed right in the bridge of my nose, right in my glasses, because that’s I was wearing with sunglasses. And I could just see his little, I crossed my eyes, I could see his little butt just arched down and just go, eeeh. It just got me right in the bridge of my nose. It’s like, So I kind of fell. And I actually, when I fell, I fell backwards. And I kind of crumpled underneath the tree and the chain came down and I was upside down with my back to the tree.

Just hanging by the safety chain. And I mean, it was really hard to just keep myself up and to keep myself from panicking. And the lady comes out and she’s like, my God, what are you doing? you okay? I’m like, no, I’m not okay. This is bad. I’m still getting stung. that reminds me of the scorpion story. geez. So I’m still getting stung and she’s like, well, I’m going to call the fire department. said, no, no, no, it’s OK. Let me try one more time. And I just, with all the muscle I could muscle in my body, I wrapped my legs around the tree trunk in like a chokehold, know, a figure of kimura or whatever, know, locked my legs behind it and hoisted myself up with the chain, got it tight again, and caught myself and then climbed down the tree. And that was the last palm tree I ever trimmed.

But I did a lot, trimmed a lot of palm trees, a lot of palm trees. It good money. know, 16, 17, 18.

Nate
Dang. So when you’re hanging upside down, the safety chain is attached to your arms, right?

Tom
You my hips, I got spikes on my legs. You clamped around just below my knee and underneath, big steel shank underneath my vask hiker 2 boots and shorts and just a t-shirt and then a belt that goes around your waist and then chains that go around the tree and then hook in on both sides and can adjust the chain for whatever size you need to be.

Nate
So no fall protection harness.

Tom
Yeah. Yeah, guess kind of. The chain and the spikes were, I guess, yeah, it was really bad. It was stupid. It was just dumb.

Nate
What’s the scorpion story? I don’t know if I’ve heard that one.

Tom
I did the same thing. was kind of a similar situation. I started pulling down the dead stuff and it was kind of coming apart and I was like, this is great. This is great news. I’m gonna pull this thing out and get all the dead limbs to come off, you know, easily and quickly and fire them down. I got to where I could float them and fly them down right into my trailer. I this trailer that I pulled behind my blazer. And so could kind of fly them into the trailer if I could get the trailer close enough.

So I was flying them in there and I pulled a big chunk out and like 10,000 tiny scorpions, this big little clear tiny scorpions just swarmed all over my body, down my shirt and my pants and you know everywhere. It was unbelievable. I don’t think I really got stung that many times, but it was really super scary.

Nate
Yeah, we’ve got it up. Yeah, because the baby scorpions, they’re born with a finite amount of venom. Then they lose it throughout their lives. So the baby ones are the most venomous.

Tom
But I don’t know if they really were strong enough to actually sting me. I don’t know. I only got hit a few times and it didn’t really bother me. I’ve been stung by scorpions a number of times.

Nate
Okay. So when you first started DMX, that was a demolition company. Was OSHA in the forefront of anybody’s mind at that time?

Tom
Sure. In the early 90s, everybody knew about OSHA. It wasn’t really big thing in Arizona, per se, compared to other places in the country, but it definitely is in the forefront of your mind. It’s always been a thing. It’s something that started, I think, in the 60s or 70s. And I should know that, but I don’t. And it’s actually, it’s, yeah, 100%.

You don’t want to hurt people and you sure as hell don’t want to get fined and cost yourself or your customer a lot of money.

Nate
Yeah. Yeah, so in the demo days, was there any equipment specific training that you wish you had access to back then? This was the late 90s, early 2000s.

Tom
Yeah, you know, at that time, you know, like learning to operate a crane was something that was just handed down like, you know, literally generation to generation in Arizona. had, they had a very strong operating engineers union that worked with the association and general contractors and those union relationships are always very fluid. was just, I was just talking to my friend in the crane business this week, actually, and we’re talking about the unions and the impact it’s had on, on his business. So that’s been a source of, of, uh, training for people to learn how to drive cranes and stuff. But it would have been nice to have a more formal training accessible. You know, the training is always out there, but you I was a small business. I was just a scrappy startup. was, you know, I started with a pickup and then I bought a truck and then I bought a crane and then I bought more trucks and more forklifts and that kind of deal.

So it was, I never really had the opportunity to have a really formalized safety program and we were small enough, we got away with it. There was probably times when we were doing things we shouldn’t have done, but we, you know, eventually it became really important to me, especially in 2000 when I got a letter from an insurance company.

Nate
Yeah, and so that’s detailed in the Certify Me About Us video that people can check out. We’ll link to that, like how that started, how Certify Me started.

So can you tell me about the knuckle boom? That was my favorite piece of equipment when I was a little kid.

Tom
The Effer, the knuckle boom, that was the one that my friend Dan, my mentor, loaned me a ton of money so I could buy that thing. I was 32 and it was expensive, it was several hundred thousand dollars. It was a really cool piece of machinery, was a Ford truck and it was a 26,000 pound capacity flatbed and it had this knuckle boom right behind the cab that would reach out 34 feet and pick up 42,000 pounds, which was pretty astonishing when you think about it, that this thing would just fold up like a knuckle behind the cab and it was a really, really cool piece of machinery.

Yeah, the old Effer We did a lot crazy stuff with that thing too, but it never let us down. It was awesome.

Nate
That was like your main equipment for moving heavy stuff.

Tom
I was, everybody else had little forklifts and trailers and trucks and I was trying to innovate and be a little different and stand out from the crowd. What a surprise. And so I went a different route and Dan loaned me the money to buy that crane. Because I, you know, I really, and I really did, it paid off because there was so many jobs. Like chiller jobs and boiler jobs and industrial plant equipment jobs. Where I could, you know, it would fit under a standard, you know, 12 foot door or 14 foot door. And so I could literally drive in the plant with the machine on my back, unfold the boom and set it in place up to 30 feet away, big ones. So it was kind of a different way of doing it. And yeah, it kind of freaked people out when we started doing that.

Nate
Wow. That’s so cool. what was the, do you remember the single heaviest self-contained piece of equipment that you ever had to move?

Tom
Yeah, and it was horrible. It was horrible. It was like the worst three days of my life. Yeah.

Nate
Really? Okay. Maybe we don’t talk about the worst three days of real life.

Tom
It was in Tracy, California. And we were hired by these guys that we knew, this electrical contractor. And they had three of these things to put in. But the last one, they couldn’t get the crane close enough. They couldn’t get the trailer close enough. And so they kind of dumped it off to the side as close as they could to the pad. And it was a 475,000 pound transformer.

So you can imagine the trailer that it took just to haul a 475,000 pound transformer and the crane that it took to pick the transformer off the trailer and set it down. The first two they were able to set on the pad no problem, easy, easy, squeezy. The third one, there was just no access, it just was really cramped.

So they set this thing on the ground right over the spoil of when they dug the excavate the excavate the foundation for the which you can imagine for a 475,000 pound transformer. It went really deep in the earth and it had all these conduits coming out of it and it went down probably I’m guessing 10 feet. So they the hole that they dug to the biggest giant foundation for this giant ass transformer.

All the spoil they just they just put over to the side and put over to the side and And and and they kind of compacted it down and not really So then they set the the transformer down right on top of where a lot of the spoil went you know the spoil went kind of all around it and It was wet and this thing was sinking and we had to figure out a way to jack it up out of the mud and get it up onto the onto the pad and we had

We had, I think, 12 pallets of 4x8s. And 4x8s are, excuse me, 6x8s. And 6x8s are oak, and they’re four feet long. And I think we can get 52 of them on a pallet. And we had 12 of those, because we knew we were going to need a lot of them to build a platform to get underneath of this thing so that we could put dollies under it and then drag it up over onto the pad.

Tom
Well, it was sinking in the mud and every time we were trying to jack it up, we’re just driving these pallets, this rigging, mean the cribbing into the ground, into the ground, into the ground. And I mean, I think that day…

Because you got to, you know, they’re solid oak. weigh probably 40 pounds a piece and just shucking them all day long, just shucking them in, shucking them out, trying to jack this thing up to get our platforms underneath it so that we could roll this thing. And I’ll bet I chucked 700 crib blocks that day. And we, I mean, it was, was horrible. We, we, had to keep going. And it was, uh, I think we, we finally quit after like 16 hours and people were puking and we, snapped a boom

off a Versa lift. It was really horrible. But we finally got it to stabilize and got our aluminum planks underneath it and rolled it over and literally collapsing in the mud from exhaustion. That was a bad day. That was a really bad day.

Nate
Dang. That was a bad day. That was a really bad day. So then you thought to yourself, maybe it might be time to start one of them internet businesses.

Tom
Well, you know, I was always struggling to find a way to find the equipment. know, I’d go to a job or an auction or something and it’d be like, Riggers from LA, know, Riggers from as far away as Denmark, or you know, all over the country, all over the world. And they all had different ways of doing things, and they all had different equipment.

Which I thought was really amazing. I’d see these guys, and I’m like, hey, where’d you get those rollers? Where’d you get those cool rollers to put underneath the machinery to roll them around on the floor and to where can move them? And they’re like, yeah, Circle K, where do you think? Nobody wanted to say, because they don’t want to give a competitor an advantage.
So I just dug and dug and dug and finally started putting it together and found a lot of it. And my mentor, Dan, always told me if you’re going to consume something, you might as well become a dealer for it. And so I became a dealer for a lot of this stuff. And then I put it on the internet in 1997.

Nate
Riggersupply.com There you go.

Tom
Rigorsupply.com

Nate
And so that was selling pieces of equipment, was it auction style?

Tom
No, no, was just rigging equipment. Dollies and jacks and, you know, pull come alongs and tuggers and I had really, I had a deal with, a year ago, these really cool air mats. You know, they could, they were in place of aluminum and they had air pucks underneath them like hovercraft. And you know, I’d come up to the air stores.
I you can float and just like, you know, we used them to move an injection molder a few times. And it was like a, you know, 150,000 pound injection molder. We got this thing balanced out perfectly on these air dollies. And like one guy could literally just push it around by hand. It was crazy. Yeah. So that kind of stuff like a little hovercraft.

And then we had a section on the website to get people to come back I was like we have to give them a reason to be interested in it and We put up classified ads for cranes just for cranes and Within six months there was 250 million dollars worth of cranes were just for sale on that site.

We were selling stuff every day and was nutty. In 1997, mean, taking a credit card on the internet was a brand new thing. distribution chains and distribution channels were not really set up for guys like me selling stuff everywhere, everywhere all at once.

Nate
Right. Yeah, that’s actually one of the questions I had written down is like what other online businesses were around in 1997?

Tom
I don’t know, man. What was around? I mean, you literally would just like, you get on Netscape or something and then we would like link it to something and there were no search engines. They were just like shopping bots that would like, you know, would compare prices. And that was before they started calling them search engines. They were calling them shopping bots so you could compare stuff.

Nate
So when you would go to these rigger sale events and talk to people, did you have a little card with the website on it that they have to type in manually, HTTP?

Tom
Yeah, yeah, we went to one trade show, an industrial or a facilities manager trade show. And that was it. But yeah, just type it in. You go to the internet, type it in. And people started linking to it. It was crazy. It really was nutty

We had to make a deal and collect the money and then purchase it and then arrange shipping and the whole thing. was just a lot of rigmarole and the stuff was all heavy. mean, one of those big tank-style rollers, like an 80-ton Hillman-style tank-style roller, weighs 120 pounds. And they come in a set of four.

Nate
Yeah, so you’d have to did you have to estimate shipping or did you like pre-quoted?

Tom
No, we knew what it was, but it was just way more hassle to just handle it and do it. It was a great business, but if I’d kept it going, it probably would turned into something big. I did something else.

Nate
Yeah. So then is that how people found out about it in the early days?

Tom
Yeah, and there was this little, all these funny little SEO tricks you could do in like 2003 and 2004. I’d have to look up the dates, but when Andy Jenkins was doing StomperNet, Andy Jenkins went on later to found Kajabi. But he and Perry and those guys were all doing the StomperNet, and it was an annual event, and they were doing it in Atlanta. I think they did two or three times. I think that was like 2000.

2005, 2006. I have to find out. We started getting involved in Google SEO in 2003, 2004.

Nate
Right on. And then, do you remember the first big name customer that you were really excited about that you had?

Tom
Yeah, Placement Pros. They were a big staffing company. That was our bread and butter for a long time. They would call and mom would sign up all the, excuse me, my partner would sign up all the students in our system for them. And then we would just bill them monthly. So we had a real white glove concierge program for them. And they did a ton of business with us for a long time.

Nate
When did you decide to start offering area lift certifications as well?

Tom
That was like 2005, 2006.

Nate
You saw the similar equipment need for similar customers.

Tom
People were calling saying, hey, what about Aerial Lifts? What about Aerial Lifts? We’re like, OK, well, let’s try Aerial Lifts. And it took off. And people were glad that they found a solution for that. And they’ve been using it ever since, just like forklifts.

Nate
And then how does like crane licensure work to become an operator.

Tom
It’s super complicated and that’s just like a whole different thing.

Nate
I imagine. Does DOT regulate that?

Tom
Yeah, DOT and the CCP, there’s a crane certified crane operator program. There’s the unions, there’s OSHA, there’s lots of layers of compliance with cranes. It’s very complicated. It’s a very, very good business, but it’s tough business.

Nate
So for your audience, what’s the biggest blind spot in your estimation that your customers might have?

Tom
That’s easy. Not doing the hands-on evaluation. It has to be site-specific and equipment-specific. Easily the biggest blind spot. The only time we get a call from OSHA is when they’re looking at a certificate and they say, is incomplete, and we say, yes, it is incomplete. And if you turn it over on the back, it says what is required to make it complete. And if those documents aren’t readily available, they probably didn’t occur. that’s how we do it.

And the first time an OSHA guy called was probably 2003 or 2004. And when he was done, after we explained the program, he was like, oh, that’s great. You’re part of the solution, not part of the problem. That’s fantastic.

And that’s every, the half a dozen times maybe that it’s happened where a newer OSHA person is in a plant and they’re looking at our documentation of training and certification. We’ll call and it’s just, like I said, very randomly and very spread out. But their eyes at the end say, oh, well, okay, that, yeah, great. That’s how it’s supposed to work. They say, yes, we know that’s how it’s supposed to work.

 

About this Video

 

From Forklift Rookie to Industry Innovator: Tom’s Journey in Heavy Equipment & OSHA Safety

When it comes to forklifts, aerial lifts, and heavy equipment safety, few people have the first-hand experience that Tom does. In a recent interview, he shared how his career began, how OSHA regulations shaped his work, and why hands-on forklift operator evaluations remain one of the most important parts of compliance.

Starting Young — Really Young

Tom’s first job in the heavy equipment industry was working for his father, operating massive forklifts — including a 36,000-pound Hyster — well before OSHA would have allowed it. “I could barely see over the steering wheel,” Tom recalled. It was the start of a lifelong career in equipment operation, machinery moving, and rigging.

Building a Business in Heavy Equipment

From running a palm tree trimming business as a teen, to founding DMX, a demolition company, Tom’s entrepreneurial path was always tied to machinery. In the 1990s, he built a network in the crane and rigging world, moving massive loads like a 475,000-pound transformer. Jobs like these required not just equipment expertise, but problem-solving skills and a deep understanding of load capacity, counterweights, and safe operation.

From Field Work to Online Innovation

In 1997, Tom launched Riggersupply.com, one of the first online marketplaces for rigging gear. Long before e-commerce was common, he was selling dollies, jacks, and even advanced air mat systems for moving industrial machinery. His site also became a hub for crane listings, with millions of dollars of equipment for sale.

By 2005, customer demand led Tom to expand into forklift certification and later aerial lift certification, helping businesses meet OSHA training requirements quickly and effectively.

OSHA Compliance and the Hands-On Evaluation Blind Spot

Tom is clear about the biggest mistake he sees in the industry: skipping the hands-on evaluation. OSHA requires site-specific, equipment-specific training for forklift operators. Paper certificates without proof of evaluation don’t meet the standard — and they’re the first thing OSHA will question during an inspection.

“The only time OSHA calls us is when a certificate is incomplete,” Tom explained. “Once we walk them through our process, they see we’re part of the solution, not the problem.”

Why This Matters for Forklift Safety

Forklift operation is one of the most common — and most regulated — activities in warehousing, manufacturing, and logistics. Proper OSHA-compliant training not only prevents costly fines but also protects workers from preventable accidents.

Whether you’re a small business or a large facility, the takeaway from Tom’s story is clear: invest in proper training, require hands-on evaluations, and treat OSHA compliance as a core part of your safety culture.