Everyone has their thing. 
Some people like to golf. Some people bowl. Me? I like levers, pedals, grease and Diesel fuel. A dozer, front end loader, excavator, crane, off-road haul truck, or landfill compactor; I've had the pleasure of using them all. Most people outgrow this stuff at the Tonka truck stage. I did not.
I certainly did have my share of Tonka trucks when I was little. I played with them in the sandbox in the back yard. I had smaller construction toys that I played with in the house when South Dakota weather prevented access to the sandbox. My Dad even brought home die-cast equipment models from Kearns Cat in Sioux Falls (Now Butler Cat). They really weren't meant to be played with, but boy did I. For hours. I'd load the Cat 627 scraper on the living room floor, and dig the carpet with the 955 track loader. It was fantastic.
I'm sure my fascination would have ended there like every other kid on the block had I not spent childhood summers going to work with Dad. Don't tell OSHA, but I knew how to run a Cat 951 track loader before age 10. One of my Dad's former superintendents, Kenny, liked to tell the story about how my Dad put me in the seat of our Link-Belt LS-108 crane out in the Black Hills and went to talk to the Guys. I mean I was maybe 5? I released the house lock on that thing and started swinging it, according to Kenny, towards the nearest power line. OK, so maybe that wasn't too cool. But I loved big toys. Growing up I got to run that track loader a lot, rubber tire loaders, a dozer just a little bit, and a smaller Link-Belt LS-98 some, Hitachi and Cat excavators, and various skid loaders. Cranes were always a challenge for me not having good depth perception. I do OK when the tool is closer like a loader, dozer, or even a excavator. But when it's out on the end of 100 feet of boom, that's tough for me.
The chances to run heavy construction equipment dwindled as I got into college and became a software developer. But I always kept up on new equipment. The idea of being an operator always burned in me. When software development, or more typically the politics associated with it, would become frustrating I would often confide in my co-workers that when I was finally done with writing software I was going to get a job at the landfill "just pushing garbage". I'm sure they took it as "doing a mindless job" but to me it wasn't that. I missed the big yellow toys.
One day in the summer of 2021 I was bored and looking on Indeed at "dozer operator" jobs. Imagine my surprise when up popped a job posting for a part-time equipment operator at the Sioux Falls Regional Landfill. I was beside myself! I applied immediately. Of course my resume had nothing about professional equipment operator. I'd be doing software development for 30 years. I remember starting my cover letter with "This isn't a joke." I was lucky enough that Ryan, the Landfill Supervisor, contacted me and invited me out for an interview. Of course I accepted. He was kind enough to offer me a job working Friday's and Saturdays. I was so excited and nervous. For the first time I would be working with other operators who were not family or friends. I wondered if I could hack it.
The first Friday came early. I got introduced to John's team at the morning meeting by Ryan. He totally oversold my qualifications. John hooked me up with my ID badge, time sheet, and two snazzy hi-viz Sioux Falls Public Works tee-shirts. Those shirts meant a lot to me. It sounds odd, but it's true. He gave me a quick tour of the site. The landfill isn't one hill where you back up and dump stuff. There's several routes for different types of material. After the tour it was time for my first job. Korry was loading cover dirt with a 400-series Volvo excavator into a Cat 745 haul truck. The one piece of equipment I'd Never used! Korry was so cool about walking me through it, though. It's not hard. We hauled 28 loads of cover that day. I had a blast.
The next day it got real. I was put in one of 2 Cat D8T Waste Handler dozers on the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) route. That's garbage to you and me. The second D8 works on the "rubble" route. Mostly construction debris. The regular operator in MSW was a really talented operator named Amanda. Like Korry, she was really good about pointers such as "don't run over the garbage trucks". This was my first time in a dozer that big. It was intimidating. As was the fact that the route was busy. Lots of trucks to not run over. The task is simple. The trucks dump the garbage on the pad. Once they leave the dozer skims the garbage off the pad an pushes it up into a pile so the landfill compactor can crush and compact it. It sounds simple, but "skimming" the garbage off the pad means the dozer blade has to be just above the ground. Too high and you're leaving dirty diapers on the pad. Too low and you're gouging the dirt pad. Trust me, if you gouge the pad in a D8, you don't even notice until you see the big hole you just dug. These new dozers are so comfortable. The controls are all electric over hydraulic. Tiny hand movements result in several tons moving. It's everything I wanted out of "pushing garbage". At the end of the day Shawn in the compactor got stuck, probably because I created a void while pushing up the garbage, and needed a pull with the D8. We got him out and once we did he let me run the Cat 836K compactor.
As much as I love dozers, the compactor was so much fun! There's more to it than crushing stuff. You use the blade on 
the 
compactor to spread out the trash, then run over it with the huge sheep's-foot wheels to compact it. This is all monitored on a GPS system so you know where you've been on the pile and how much you've compacted everything. But the best part is...crushing stuff! I got to crush 2 fiberglass boats, several hot tubs, and a pickup camper than I can remember. The MSW "garbage" is soft and squishy. A comfortable ride. But most of my compactor time was spent in "rubble". The regular operators don't care for rubble because it's hard, and makes for a rough ride in a dozer or compactor. But compacting dirty diapers gets old. You never know what you've going to get in the rubble. Boats and hot tubs are awesome. Old busted up concrete or tree stumps? Yeah that sucks.
Eventually the rubble route was getting close to being full. A new cell for rubble had already been made ready and it was decided that only the commercial dumpsters would be sent to old rubble route and non-commercial loads would starting going to the new route. That was Route 6. Since the regular operator in the D8 stayed with the commercial loads the old route I offered to tend to the new route with the non-commercial folks. At the time there wasn't another D8 for this route. What they did have was a Cat 973D track loader. Did I mention the first piece of equipment was a track loader? I love track loaders. They're so versatile. And that 973 was nicer and bigger than any track loader I'd ever run before.
I pushed garbage for several weekends with the 973. Saturdays were always busy. The "normal" customers were always entertaining. 
Some would show up with a trailer of trash and have no idea how to back it up to the working face. Some would not even bother and just dump their stuff 200 yards from the face. I could take that whole mess, though, and shape it up nicely with the 973. I got co
compliments from the other operators on how clean I kept the pad with that loader. That meant a lot to me since I respected the hell out of all of them. The absolute worst load to push up in rubble is a load of shingles. The came out of the dump trailer in a giant ball. You'd push them up the hill and they would start to un-ball and turn into this mat of shingles that were incredibly slippery in a tracked machine or even the compactor. It was like ice skating. Plus there were always shingles left on the pad after the push. With a D8 I could never get good enough to skim single shingles off the pad without gouging it terribly. With the 975 I could pick them up and take almost no dirt with them. I love that machine so much. If I had a spare couple hundred thousand in cash I'd buy one just to play with it.
So that's the deal. I love big yellow toys. I love making big stuff into little stuff. And I have to say, I love working with the people that operate these big toys. They work hard, play hard, and always have something funny to say. To all the professional operators out there; you rock.