Operating Engineers Local 3
Organized Labor
Feb 2009
Randy Murphy, Crane Operator, 33 years The best part about being an operating engineer is you get to go all over and build great things, like working on the Bay Bridge. It is quite an historic thing, and to see what the old-timers did when they built the original bridge, it’s pretty amazing. They didn't have the big cranes we have today. They had to build the whole thing with small rigs and mostly manual labor. I have a lot of respect for the iron workers, laborers, and, of course, the operating engineers who built that bridge. And it has held up real well. I started out as a pile driver. Then my father-in-law got me into running cranes. He had his own company building foundations. My wife’s also an operating engineer. We’ve been married 34 years and she has worked in the field for 17 years. We work together on a lot of the jobs. It’s great working together. Sometimes she oils for me, and other times she runs her own crane.