4/10/2018 3:12 PM
Edited Date/Time: 4/10/2018 3:16 PM
I worked for one of the supercross promoters back in the late 80's and early 90's before the all sold out the what became clear channel and is now feld.
We ran in the old atlanta open baseball stadium, tampa, memorial stadium in charlotte, miami, and orlando. All these were open stadiums on plywood (except a time or two they went in on the field because they were resodding anyway).
Tear down would start immediately after the night show, or at some events after ams ran on sunday.
First thing was getting everything off the field. Sometimes hay was rented, so they would pick up undamaged bales, signs were reused, penants went in the dumpsters.
Then operators would start pushing jumps into piles, or if it was muddy, they would skim mud off and try to use any dry dirt to build roads that could support dump trucks.
Then they would bring in gradalls or excavators (gradalls were phased out as excavators became common). If there were teeth on the buckets they would weld plates on them for a smooth edge. Normally there would be 4 machines.
Laborers would be brought in, 32 to 48, and split into crews based on how many machines were there.
Each crew had shovelers, sweepers, and stackers. The plywood had to cleaned off as the dirt was scrapped off, including any gaps that opened, so that there wouldn't be 10 or 20 truckloads of dirt left on the field. As the plywood was cleaned off guys would pick up the plywood and put in 50 sheet stacks. It had to be 50, and the had to be reasonably straight so it could be strapped to go on trucks.
If they were stock piling the dirt to use in the future you had to try and get as much of the plastic out of the dirt as it was handled.
This would normally take 18-24 hours straight through, depending on amount of dirt, operators, and breakdowns. It was a slog. Things would get interesting sometimes when you have that many laborers working. There was no drug testing policy, and a lot of the laborers would work 4-6 hours and cash out.
The stadiums would normally clean public areas (concourses, seating, walk tunnels) and promoters would clean access tunnels, the field, and sometimes the pits.
I know a lot of it has changed since then. Dirtwurks has several crews of operators so that construction starts on some tracks while others are being torn down.
Most of the stadiums are domes. Coming off concrete is so much easier.
Getting laborers is probably different. When I stared it was not uncommon to go out and pick up laborers off the street and pay cash. That was ...um... interesting sometimes. In Atlanta we would go the men's shelter and get them. After a show office was broken into they started using employment agencies. About the same quality of workers, except we had their real names if they decided to cut you or whack you over the head.
Dang, I didn't intend to write an autobiography.
