Ran into my old foreman from 15 years back, he made me feel like a rookie again

I was grabbing supplies at the supply house on Johnson Ave last Tuesday and this older guy walks up, it's Dave from my first crew back in '09. We got to talking about running conduit and he goes "you still using that old bender from Klein?" I told him yeah, same one. He laughed and said he switched to a Milwaukee cordless bender a couple years back. Said it saves him like 20 minutes per run on big jobs. I always thought those things were gimmicks but he showed me a video of him doing a 90 in like 10 seconds. Made me wonder how much time I've wasted the old way. Has anyone else switched to the cordless benders and actually noticed a difference on commercial jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

keith_rodriguez21d ago

Oh man, that's exactly what happened to me! I ran into my old journeyman Tony at Home Depot last spring and he had that same Milwaukee bender on his truck. I thought no way it's that good, but he let me try it on a 3/4" run we had to do and I was floored. I mean, I've been bending conduit since I was an apprentice and I still can't believe how fast that thing is. The calibration is spot on too, I was worried about that. I finally caved and bought one a few months back for a big warehouse job and it cut my bending time in half easily. It's not even just the speed, it's that my hand doesn't hurt at the end of the day. Your foreman is right, you waste a ton of time doing it the old way.

dianal9421d ago

Okay yeah I used to be totally skeptical about those too. But seeing his video and hearing how much time it saves on big runs honestly makes me want to try one out. Did you have any trouble getting used to the weight of it?