Page 69 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

The reason we exist
680-mile natural gas pipeline stretching from Merrill, Wyoming to Malin, Oregon. Rockford Corp. had the 126-mile portion Peterson was in- volved with—Spreads 6 and 7. Dolan was one of a handful of Peterson field technicians assigned to the project, along with Case Shively. Both were responsible for helping repair and maintain three hundred pieces of equipment for Rockford. They lived and breathed the job 24/7 from early No- vember 2009 to July 2011.
Dolan ended up spending six hours on the back of that 345 excavator. The problem was straight-for- ward enough. Two days earlier, the operator had gotten off-balance and tipped the machine onto its side. By the time they could get enough equip- ment down there to tip it upright again, all the oil had drained past the piston rings, which locked up the engine. It was Dolan’s task to pull the injectors, drain all the oil from the cylinders, and get it run- ning again. “The machine was on such an extreme grade that I had to tie myself off to pull the engine apart,” says Dolan. “They also sent down several laborers to help me. They would hand up tools as I needed them. And I would hand them rocker shafts and injectors and hardware because there was nowhere to set anything down. It would have just slipped off and rolled down the hill.”
Peterson had 300 Cat rental machines on the job, between Spreads 6 & 7
The terrain on Spreads 6 and 7 was rugged, yet
fairly normal for pipe-laying contractors used to covering a lot of virgin territory. “To get the equipment down there to work, they would daisy-chain eight to ten D8s together by winch and cable,” says Dolan. “It was very choreographed. There were always a couple of D8Ts at the top as anchors for the ones going down. It was impressive to watch. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Rockford’s portion of the Ruby Pipeline, alone, required a huge amount of iron. No one outfit could meet
CHAPTER 4 | 67