# Homemade/******* tuggers



## MHElectric (Oct 14, 2011)

I know some of you guys are regular McGuyvers. Show me what you got! 

B4T used to have some kind of electric winch attached to his truck. Can't remember the exact set up, but I'm pretty sure he used it for handling generators by himself. 

I'm thinking more along the lines of using something like this setup to be able to pull long runs of wire in by yourself.


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## stuiec (Sep 25, 2010)

did someone say ******* tugger??


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## Mulder (Sep 11, 2010)

Have used trucks, cars, scissors lifts, boom lifts, tractors, forklifts, 4 wheelers, 3 wheelers, UTVs, and a 300+ pound guy whose nickname was "tugger". And maybe and actual tugger a time or two. Haven't used a horse. Yet.


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## Kevin (Feb 14, 2017)

stuiec said:


> did someone say ******* tugger??
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You're missing the cinder block for the throttle... 

Sent from my new phone. Autocorrect may have changed stuff.


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

The really interesting stuff is not what did you use to pull wire. The really interesting question is what did you do with a real wire puller.......

I've set monstrous glue lam beams up on the posts using my super tugger.
I used that same bastard to pull out a 50 horse pump motor out from under a chilling tower up on the 4th floor parking deck of a building the other day and then used it to get the motor up onto a trailer and off to the rewind shop. The 24" shives that were packed into that tugger set help make doing that kinda stuff a real blast.


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## MHElectric (Oct 14, 2011)

You know your in good company when everyone encouges you to use a truck hitch! arty:

The last time I used a rope and hitch, I yanked the pull-box and pipe right off the wall and damaged some sheet rock on the other side. Guess I wasn't light enough on the gas pedal.


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## MHElectric (Oct 14, 2011)

These are what Im thinking about.

The third one has a remote, which is exactly on point for pulling on wire by yourself...Except for that price tag!!!!! Dang bro, if need another stimulus check to afford that!


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## Bird dog (Oct 27, 2015)

Sleeve anchor a 535 threader to the floor & use a 2 1/2" piece of rigid. If Darryl & his other brother Darryl ran the conduit, all bets are off.


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## Lone Crapshooter (Nov 8, 2008)

The contractors that worked for me ae the plant they used a piece of square tube that fit the receiver hitch in the pickup with a traditional tugger fastened to it. The setup worked for the most part but for some reason they never gad a support on the outboard end away from the truck. worked better. The outboard support would have been arranged so you could pull against it but with a little bit of imagination I think it was doable.
LC


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## Helmut (May 7, 2014)

I've never used a pick-up for this, but it brings up an interesting story.

Many moons ago, I got a call about power being out in a auto shop. They were missing a phase. underground feed.
Anyway, I called the PC and they came out when I wasn't there. They informed me it's the customers problem, not the PC, and there was a splice box in the parking lot. They moved the cars and found it. 

Secondary pipe collapsed under the lot was my call.

Give him 2 options of digging up lot and install new pipe and wire, or install 3 poles and make an ariel service behind the shop.

Doesn't like my price, gets another guy he talked to at the bar about it.

Couple days later, one of my guys drives by the place and see's smoke. 
Here's some guys, I suppose are the cheaper electricians, are using a pick-up truck to pull the secondaries out. The had a rope on the hitch, and were smoking the tires pulling the wires out. We just laughed...

About 2 weeks later, I drove by, and saw the ariel they installed in the back. 
I also saw four big patches of rubber where the truck must of been.
I think it was safe to say, he burnt up a whole set of tires trying to pull secondaries out of a crushed pipe.


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## LARMGUY (Aug 22, 2010)

I watched an electrician grab a cable he was just about ready to hook on to his tugger and "ZIP!" Down through the stub up it went. He looked at me and I at him and we both ran out of the building only to watch a guy in a Jeep heading down the street with 100 yards of copper cable whipping the cars parked along the curb.


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## MHElectric (Oct 14, 2011)

LARMGUY said:


> I watched an electrician grab a cable he was just about ready to hook on to his tugger and "ZIP!" Down through the stub up it went. He looked at me and I at him and we both ran out of the building only to watch a guy in a Jeep heading down the street with 100 yards of copper cable whipping the cars parked along the curb.


Now that is some good quality stuff right there. I would pay to see something like that happen.


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## Kevin (Feb 14, 2017)

MHElectric said:


> Now that is some good quality stuff right there. I would pay to see something like that happen.


Pay you say?

I think something can be arranged.

Sent from my new phone. Autocorrect may have changed stuff.


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## wcord (Jan 23, 2011)

Mulder said:


> Have used trucks, cars, scissors lifts, boom lifts, tractors, forklifts, 4 wheelers, 3 wheelers, UTVs, and a 300+ pound guy whose nickname was "tugger". .


All of the above ( his name was Archie)
and a couple of different cranes. Biggest had 200ft of boom on it
Nicest pulls I ever did were with cranes. Used a steel cable a few times and absolutely no stretch when tugging.
And of course tuggers more times than I can remember.

Used one on Thursday to haul a king size headboard ( wouldn't fit in the elevator) up the outside of a condo ( to the 10th floor):vs_laugh:


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## wcord (Jan 23, 2011)

Lone Crapshooter said:


> The contractors that worked for me ae the plant they used a piece of square tube that fit the receiver hitch in the pickup with a traditional tugger fastened to it. The setup worked for the most part but for some reason they never gad a support on the outboard end away from the truck. worked better. The outboard support would have been arranged so you could pull against it but with a little bit of imagination I think it was doable.
> LC


the receiver idea works very well. Did that about a year ago.


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## Kevin (Feb 14, 2017)

While we are on this topic, I had attempted to build a contraption for one of the Van's I had to pull some wire solo. I bolted together some steel tubing and mounted an eyelet on it for a pulley. The theory was, I could back the van up to have the pulley directly over the conduit, run a rope from there to where I was feeding, and pull the rope as I fed it. In reality, twisted rope doesn't like pulleys. I'll see if I can find a photo and I'll edit this post to add it.

Edit: found a video, here's a screenshot of the contraption.

Sent from my new phone. Autocorrect may have changed stuff.


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## Lone Crapshooter (Nov 8, 2008)

Check this out 
Just found this on YouTube
"A Interesting Way To Pull Wire

LC


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## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

I was an inspector for a runway lighting project.
The underground was usually hundreds of feet long.

The EC had an electric version of this mounted on the back of a pickup truck:










It worked like a champ


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## alfonsogg (May 1, 2020)

Southeast Power said:


> I was an inspector for a runway lighting project.
> The underground was usually hundreds of feet long.
> 
> The EC had an electric version of this mounted on the back of a pickup truck:
> ...


I find this really interesting. Besides being an inspector, did you participate in something else with that project?


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## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

Anyone else just wrap a rope around a piece of strut and use it as a pry bar on a short pull like the rack-a-tiers thing that is this idea with a rope release? It just seems obvious to me.

Very few linemen that I know have actual tensioners. Most just use the truck and/or winch and pull to a certain sag, a little tighter in winter and looser in summer. Tensioners are a lot of work to set up and only used on really big pulls.

Don’t knock those $200 pullzalls. They do a great job until you reach a point where you need to buy/rent a 5k or 10k tugger anyways. Much better than messing around with comealongs which are so cheaply made they’re disposable junk. If you only have 50-109 feet and are just fighting too many elbows it’s quick. Even with a tugger sometimes just adding an LB pull box is the best way.

The thing with a truck pull is communication is almost never good enough and you don’t have smooth “inching” and tension control unless it’s winching. So unless there is no chance of snags and nobody has to feed the cable in, these are always just asking for trouble. On conduit and duct bank jobs it just seems like it’s asking for trouble.


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## gpop (May 14, 2018)

I've used all sort of equipment to pull wire. The most important thing is to brace the conduit especially if its pvc. 

Tugger's are slower than a f350 but they transfer the force back to the conduit so that's the preferred option. 

Weirdest one ive seen looks like a cement truck but its the cable drum for a over sized fish-tape. That things either going to pull the wire or something is going to get destroyed.


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## zoltan (Mar 15, 2010)

MHElectric said:


> These are what Im thinking about.
> https://www.electriciantalk.com/attachments/f14/143200d1587218456t-homemade-*******-tuggers-65a85ebc-8be2-4b78-b28e-66e84b57812d.jpg
> 
> 
> !


BITD we used something similar to hoist a 600lb, big $$$ chandelier.


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## B-Nabs (Jun 4, 2014)

I just saw a post on reddit where they were taking about using the track of a mini excavator: they lifted one track off the ground with the bucket, and looped the rope around the track once like a capstan. 

Sent from my SM-G975W using Tapatalk


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## telsa (May 22, 2015)

I can't upload a photo -- as my rig has been totally taken apart.

It consisted of a Greenlee 2001 strapped with strut and a Sherman & Reilly sheave.

This then was mounted to a full strength hand truck with solid tires.

In use, one shoved lumber underneath to take the wheels out of the play.

For minor pulls, it was the cat's pajammas.

It even impressed the Otis crew.

Today its basic design has been commercialized by all of the usual suspects.

MY 2001 needs a re-build, of course. Just too many pulls.

My favorite trick: pull #10s through a 5 hub Bell box -- with a chase nipple as a bushing.

I could lean my instant set-up tugger by leaning it to the wall -- and let rip.

The bushing would be replaced by a die-cast plug, of course.

I'd feed the other end of the raceway the same way or put a 1st year on it.

This down and up scheme is very common in retail, residential, even industrial.


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