Heavy equipment rodeo draws the best of the backhoe boys

The two-day rodeo offered amateurs and professional operators four skill-testing events to challenge their dexterity at the controls of a backhoe.

Return champ says it’s all about feel

Playing with big toys certainly wasn’t child’s play for first-time Backhoe Rodeo contestant Thomas Hawken.

A heavy equipment mechanic student at College Boréal, Hawken said it was an enlarged version of a child’s shape sorter toy that flustered him the most in the two-day rodeo. In that event, Hawken had to fit a pair of wooden blocks — one triangular and the other rectangular — into matching templates using the boom of a Case Extendahoe excavator.

“I couldn’t even do that as a kid with the (shape sorter) puzzles,” said Hawken jokingly.

“And to do that with a backhoe — I had a pretty hard time with that.”

The two-day rodeo, which began on March 5, offered amateurs and professional operators four skill-testing events designed to challenge their dexterity at the controls of a backhoe.

In this biannual feature of the National Heavy Equipment Show in Toronto, contestants also had to use the machines to hang hula hoops on a steel rack, and to scoop volleyballs, footballs and tennis balls into designated bins — all while racing against the clock.

Hawken, who posted an overall time of 13:01 on the rodeo’s first day, said he travelled almost nine hours from Timmins,Ont. to take part in the competition, but felt the long trip was well worth the chance to play with the machines he repairs in school.

“I’ve driven them around a bit, but I’ve never actually operated the boom,” he said. “That’s why I had no problems slamming the bucket into the concrete a couple times.”

The ordeal was somewhat less tumultuous for 51-year-old Craig French, who operates a backhoe regularly as part of his own business — Craig’s Backhoe Services – in Allenford, Ont.

A regular rodeo participant for nearly a decade, French finished the first day’s rodeo in fifth place with an overall time of 9:48. He returns every two years in the hopes he will one day emerge a champion.

“Second place is the best I’ve ever had, but number one is the only spot to have,” he said.

This year, however, first place went to returning champion Octavio Miranda of Miranda Construction, who finished all four events in a dazzling 3:25. Last time, he managed to breeze through the competition in just 2:25.

Although he claims he hadn’t operated a backhoe for nearly six years, Miranda doesn’t think the lack of practice hurt his skill with the controls. Good operators, he says, are born and not made.

“There’s no secret – I think it’s just that some people just got it, and some people only got the act for it,” he said. “You can’t explain it, but once you get in (the cab) you’d know the feeling.”