Seeing Huntsville From 20 Stories Up “Never Gets Old”

Huntsville Hospital Madison Street Tower expansion crane operator Jason Cable

We’ve all seen beautiful sunrises, but not like Jason Cable.

From his perch atop the 197-foot-tall construction crane at the corner of Madison Street and St. Clair Avenue, Jason has a spectacular, birds-eye, postcard-worthy view of the sun coming up each day over the Rocket City.

“The way the clouds move and the sky works, it changes every morning,” he says. “I’ve seen crisp blue sunrises and red sky sunrises.

“It never gets old.”

Among the hundreds of hard hat-wearing workers building new intensive care units and patient rooms at Huntsville Hospital’s Madison Street Tower, Jason’s job is almost certainly the most unique.

As the lone crane operator for the $150 million project, he is responsible for lifting all the heavy steel rebar, concrete and building forms into place — 20,000 pounds at a time.

Modern-day nomads

Construction crane operators live a nomadic existence. They follow the work from one fast-growing city to the next, helping assemble new hospitals and hotels, schools and sports stadiums, high-rise apartments and high-end stores.

Jason is from Butler, Pennsylvania, but expects the Madison Street Tower job to keep him in Huntsville for 18 months. Before that, he helped build Vanderbilt University’s latest residence hall in downtown Nashville and worked on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Chickamauga Lock replacement project outside Chattanooga.

Having the best seat in the house to watch a new structure rise from the earth is satisfying work, but it can be lonely. Jason is by himself in the cramped cab of the tower crane for about 12 hours a day, six days a week.

It’s the polar opposite of his noisy home life as a husband and father with 10 kids between 13 and 26 years old.

Here, Jason’s only interaction with other people is through two-way radios directing the crane’s movements and alerting him to any inbound medical helicopters.

The steel crane is so big that pilots have to account for it as they land and take off from Huntsville Hospital’s roof.

Jason’s employer, Maxim Crane Works, is a major player in the construction industry with crane operators scattered across the country. But there aren’t a ton of people with the specialized training required to run the mammoth machines.

“If I get sick or go on vacation, my coverage has to come out of Birmingham or Nashville,” says Jason, who belongs to the International Union of Operating Engineers’ Pittsburgh chapter.

Believe it or not, the Madison Street Tower crane is considered a mid-sized model (they come in much larger sizes). Still, Jason has jaw-dropping views in every direction.

Even after six months working at Huntsville Hospital, he gets a thrill when he pivots to the west and catches sight of the city’s most famous landmark – the Saturn V rocket at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

“Seeing the rocket multiple times a day is just so unique and honestly mind blowing,” Jason says.

Inquiring minds want to know

Spending your work day in the clouds is a curiosity, and people have questions.

How do you get up there?

Do you come down for lunch?

And most importantly, What happens when you need to pee?

First, you should know there’s no elevator. Jason has to climb a series of ladders to reach the cab. He begins his ascent around 5:30 a.m., and it takes about 15 minutes. He’s in good shape at age 41 but still has to pause every so often to catch his breath.

“I try to push myself to go a little higher on the climb each morning, because that’s my main exercise for the day,” Jason says. “Once I’m up, I’m sitting for pretty much the entire shift.”

He doesn’t use a safety harness on his climb, but each ladder is surrounded by a cage designed to break a fall.

Coming down to eat is obviously a hassle, so Jason packs his lunch. While his co-workers are scarfing down burgers, fries and chicken fingers, Jason is picky about what he eats.

“I try to eat light because there’s no way to walk off your lunch up there,” he says with a laugh.

Which brings us to the question about going to the bathroom.

There’s no toilet atop the crane, and the cab is basically a glass cube. When nature calls, you have to be discreet about it. Jason uses a bottle but knows other crane operators who set up funnels running from the cab to a Porta Potty below.

Building America

Here’s another interesting fact about tower crane operators: they experience what Jason calls “land sickness.” When there’s a breeze (and there usually is), the cab rocks from side to side. After hours on end, your body starts thinking it’s normal.

“I used to come down and sway like I was still in the crane,” Jason says. “My wife would have to grab me by the shoulders to stop me from swaying. I’m sure there’s a science behind why that happens.”

Life as a crane operator means being on the road and away from family more or less continually. Jason’s home, for now, is an RV campground in Decatur.

His wife Amanda sometimes joins him and finds temporary work managing restaurants, but their kids usually stay behind.

“Having a supportive, loving wife and family is the only way a traveling crane operator can keep going alone on the road,” Jason says. “They need to be recognized for the sacrifices they make.”

Jason has been criss-crossing America for the past decade operating big cranes that he jokingly calls “giant claw machines.” But that wasn’t always the plan. Fighting fires was his first love, and he was good at it – until a burning house collapsed on him, wrecking his knee.

Doctors weren’t sure he would ever walk again.

“It was just a freak accident,” Jason says. “I had to have a bunch of surgeries and was lucky to be able to move on with my life – just on a different path.

“Now I get to help build America, which is pretty cool.”