Make sure that you always have the right tools for the job.
It’s no use trying to eat a steak with a teaspoon, and a straw.
― Anthony T. Hincks

My Dad and I were surrounded by a sea of tools floating on a floor stained with a thousand shades of oil.

It’s funny the memories you carry with you from childhood. I must’ve been between 5 and 10 years old.

No mechanic was around so we felt permission to move past the dirty threshold to inspect a car with it’s hood up while we waited for him to return. My father was pretty good with tools, which I’d learned watching him punch out items on his weekend to-do lists. I was familiar with the basic tools that should be present in any man’s arsenal, but I remember being curious about some others that lay around that car, which were either weird variations of what I’d seen or completely unfamiliar.

At that age my dad still knew everything, so I pointed at one near my foot and asked him “What is that?”

“That is the right tool” he said.

On a few occasions I had seen him hastily pull his hands out from somewhere in the engine compartment of one of our cars and walk away in pain to regain his composure. So it made perfect sense when he said “These tools are made specifically for this kind of work. After you’ve banged your knuckles enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get the right tool. ”

A Tool for Every Trade

I’m in my 40’s now and this pearl of wisdom has stood the test of time, proving universally true and useful. As I write this I have only about 4 hours remaining on a large home flooring project, but if I hadn’t been using the right tools from the start, I’d likely still have about 30 hours to go. Honestly, without the right tools, I would have hired someone else to do it for me. It’s staggering the advantage a compound miter saw has over a basic miter saw. And a dead blow hammer is a brilliant tool, made of rubber and filled with sand to prevent the rebound you get from a normal hammer, saving you the frustration and expense of destroying your new floor. The project is turning out well precisely because I’ve been well equipped. What I couldn’t borrow from neighbors I simply bought. Every purchase has been worth the investment.

Stated simply, the right tool can make the impossible possible.

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.  -Winston Churchill

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. -Thomas Carlyle

Think of a sport, industry, hobby or profession, and it’s likely tools are constantly being designed to revolutionize it. Here are a few other examples:

Dental tools — I recently got a filling and a crown installed, in seconds, using a light wand.

Mountain bikes — The day I bought a better bike I immediately became twice as good a rider.

A chainsaw — in the hands of a skilled man makes him a one-man wrecking crew.

A backhoe — in the hands of a skilled operator makes him an artist.

Computer software — Apps and programs are built for individuals and disciplines for almost every purpose under the sun. 

Universal Mandate

It’s a universal mandate for humanity to innovate in his work, to cultivate his wilderness into a garden and to responsibly build the tools needed to realize it. I love this definition of “work” by Tim Keller.

Work is rearranging the raw materials of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.

Work at it’s best is standing beside your fellow man, sun scorched and thirsty, on the fringes of a wilderness, and then submitting your energies to a vision to build a shelter from the timbers and tap a cool drink from the ground. Sometimes a good axe and shovel, fueled by hard work, are all that’s needed to change the lives of many. And is there anything more rewarding for humanity to do than to help humanity?

But after you’ve tried digging the hard ground long enough with your fingernails, you eventually quit, figure out a better way, or get lost in the madness and keep losing fingernails because you’ve stopped dreaming of a better way. And this is where the dump truck industry seems to be, it’s potential untapped and it’s explorers weary.

Somehow, despite the explosion of innovation everywhere else, the dump truck industry has had nobody developing tools to make it better. But this has changed.

The Dump Truck Tool

So then why is the Dump truck industry still busting it’s knuckles? It appears to be the ugly stepchild of the construction industry, the last kid to get fed and bathed. While everyone else moving on and off the job site seems to have been given technology to continue growing at a healthy rate, those who deal with dump trucks are all scratching their collective heads wondering when and how things will change. And there is absolute agreement that things MUST change.

Thankfully, that era has come to a close.  A tool made specifically for dump trucks now exists that can take an average hard-working owner or operator and make them extraordinary almost overnight. Energy once wasted by both humans and diesel engines can now be re-allocated to better serve their existence and calling. And with it, better communication between drivers, managers and customers is now allowing everyone to enjoy a collective lowering of anxiety and breathe a collective sigh of relief, long overdue. Dauber’s calling is to help the dump truck industry by giving it a tool that allows it to do it’s job better. I’m excited personally to be a part of it and to see it used and changing lives.

My father was right. When a man is wise and hard-working, but still busting his knuckles trying to get a job done well, he will inevitably invest in a tool to help him begin building and fixing again. Because that is when a man is at his best.

My father is a good father and teacher. In that oily garage in my childhood my father sowed a seed of wisdom in me, trusting it would take root someday and possibly help others provide better shelter and water. And maybe even prevent a few bloody knuckles.

Thanks Dad.

The best investment is in the tools of one’s own trade.  -Benjamin Franklin

 

If you work with dump trucks and are looking for the right tool, you’re in the right place. Give us a call. It is our privilege to serve those who serve.

Some tools that have effectively made the impossible possible: