Excerpt
Gilbert Foster Crane was considered the best dozer man of his time. He could put a dozer where no one else could or would. He cleaned canyon walls and spread riff-raff where it was considered impossible to even get a dozer. He knew dirt and he knew how to get machinery to move it. He worked his way to the top by age thirty-one with the Utah Construction Company. He was the youngest superintendent that the U.C. ever had. While at the top of his field he quit.

Gilbert entered the construction business in 1924 at the age of fourteen. His dad, Foster Crane, was in the construction business, but made a poor living and was a poor provider for his family. Gib wanted to make something of himself so he started running teams of mules that pulled dump wagons on a road-building project. By age fifteen Gilbert learned how to use one of the first gas cats that came out. He got good at it.

Gilbert worked on a road project in Colorado then to a railroad bridge in Cheyenne, Wyoming, before he turned twenty. He turned twenty-one driving truck at Boulder (Hoover) Dam. He spent three years there driving ambulance, dump truck, and cement truck. He watched the first two pours of cement made in the base of the canyon. One lesson he learned from this job was how easily you can get killed if youre not careful.

Gilbert returned to Jerome, Idaho, and met and married his beloved wife and partner for the next sixty-five years, Vera Jane Blamire. Together they traveled across the country from one construction project to another. Times were tough and these were the only jobs available.

Gilbert was the dozer man at Bingham Canyon in Utah. He was the dozer man and boss over the cats and carryalls building a dam in Lemoyne, Nebraska and on two more dams in Montana and a dam in Nantahala, North Carolina. He became the superintendent over railroad grading and laying tracks in Garfield and St. Johns, Utah. He was superintendent over thirty-two cats and carryalls moving dirt for the foundation of the bomb depot at Tooele. All this was accomplished by the age of thirty-five.

Gib Crane was considered the best, but at the height of all this, he quit. He loved moving dirt, but he loved his wife and family more. His wife, Vera, had enough of the construction business. She wanted a permanent home and a bigger family.

Gib was glad he quit and he never looked back. He started a plumbing shop and was good at it. Vera was happy so Gilbert was happy too. His love and skill for dirt moving got him back in the business, only this time for himself. He eventually owned both a backhoe and a dragline. He moved dirt, and he moved a lot of it, and he was good at it. Gib was still running a backhoe at the age of seventy-five. He didnt mind. He always liked working and providing for his family.