The days you are not in the seat are the days it earns.
A way of working, which is the name here for how you run a machine once it is recorded, admitted and built, is kept whole for as long as it is licensed. Machines get traded and it does not go stale. You can record again. And you can end it on your own say, on any day you like.
The feedlot at first light, cattle in at the bunks · The group's own photograph
Nothing about it wears out, and nothing about it runs out while you are not looking.
A session is one recording of you working. It is kept as it was made, for as long as it is licensed, and there is no term on it that quietly expires on a date somebody else picked. The day it changes is a day you cause.
The count is the hours a way of working of yours was in use on somebody else's job. It is written against the session it was built from, so the session has to stay whole for the count to be worth checking. A record that had been tidied up, shortened or rebuilt would settle no argument about hours, and settling an argument about hours is part of what it is kept for.
A session is kept for as long as it is licensed, whole, because the count is written against it and you may ask to check it. The day that changes is the day your notice arrives, and what happens then is written on the withdrawal page.
- 01No term to renewYou are not asked to sign again every so often to keep what you already have. A licence runs while it runs, and ending it is an act of yours rather than a date coming round on somebody's calendar.
- 02Nothing is trimmedThe recording is kept as it was made, with the morning check, the photographs and the notes that came with it. Keeping a piece of a session would be keeping a different thing, and it would not answer the questions a session exists to answer.
- 03Nothing moves without youIt is not sold on, not passed to a second customer, and not handed to your employer. A session is information about an identifiable person, and it goes nowhere without their yes.
A record that could be quietly shortened would be a record nobody could count against. Keeping it whole is part of being able to pay you from it.
A new machine in the same family does not end it.
Iron gets traded, updated and replaced, and anybody who has run machines for a living wants to know whether a record of them working goes stale the day the fleet does. It does not. A listing is a name held in the repository, which is the register an owner looks in to find a way of working. A listing is offered for a family of machine and never for one machine.
A family is a kind of machine, not a model number. A tracked excavator, a motor grader, an articulated rock truck: each is a family. A way of working taught on a family shows for that family, and for no other.
The same family, a different machine, and it still runs.
An owner who trades one tracked excavator for another is still running the family it was taught on, so the listing still shows and the choice on the morning of a job is the same choice it was before. Nothing has to be recorded again because a machine went down the road.
What reaches a machine from us is a release, and a release is written for the controls that machine already has. Nothing of ours is wired to a machine while a person works, and nothing of ours moves a control. The iron changing underneath a name does not change what the name is worth.
If the family does not match, no listing shows.
There is no near enough. A way of working taught on one family is not offered for a second family, however alike the two look from the ground. A machine outside the family sees no listing at all, and no page here pretends otherwise.
A second family is a second recording.
If you run more than one family and both are worth recording, each is its own session under its own agreement, and each is found by the family it was taught on. Nothing is stretched across from one to the other to save the trouble.
Turning down a job because the family does not match is not caution for its own sake. A name offered for a machine it was never taught on would be wrong often enough to be worth nothing, and the name on it is yours.
The repository, where a name is heldThere is more to build from every time you sit on different ground.
One recording is not the end of it. A second, a third, another machine, another season: each is its own session, and each adds to what can be built under your name.
Every recording begins the same way. You are told what is recorded, in plain words, before it starts, and you answer each agreement on its own. A session made while the agreement covering it was not live is refused, and the reason says so.
A later session does not cancel an earlier one.
Each session stands on its own and is counted on its own, and the count is kept session by session. Nothing already recorded is overwritten by something recorded afterwards.
The hard ground is the ground worth recording.
Wet, blind, soft, frozen, dark. The days that separate one operator from the next are the days a record is short of, so a week of bad ground is a week worth a session.
You can end one and keep another.
A withdrawal can be all of it or one part of it, because consent comes apart and the count is kept session by session. Ending one session does not touch the rest, and nothing about ending one counts against you later.
The instrument, which is the agreement, the register and the count that sit underneath somebody else's machine, asks you for nothing twice. What is worth recording again is a day unlike the last one.
It earns while you are doing something else.
A wage pays for the hours you are in the seat. A licence pays for the hours a way of working is in use on somebody else's job, and those are two different sets of hours. The second set does not stop when you get out of the machine.
And it does not end your work. Everything you know is still in your hands tomorrow, on your own machine, for your own employer, at your own rate. What changes is that a second thing can earn while you are doing something else, and one day that will include the days your back has decided otherwise.
Retirement is one of those days. So is a winter off, a stretch laid up, a season spent on something else entirely. None of them stops a crew choosing your name on a morning, and none of them stops the count being written or the pay following it.
A day nobody chooses is a normal day.
Sometimes no way of working on offer suits the ground, the machine or the job. Then the person chooses nothing, no count starts, and the machine works as it always has, with a person in the seat. Nothing is owed for a day like that, and nothing is written against your name for it either.
Nobody is picked from a ranking.
Inside a family the listings are names, and they are not sorted by anything. You are asked for by name, by somebody who has seen the work. A quiet month is not a mark against you, because there is no mark on this site to make.
The count starts when a person on a crew chooses your name and writes their own name on the choice. No choice, no count, and no pretending otherwise.
A crew can choose your name on a morning you are not working.
The hours a way of working is in use are not the hours you are in a seat, and they do not stop when you get out of one.
The bunk line at sunset, the fence running out to the sky · The group's own photograph
Two dates, both true, and no fee for walking away.
Ending it is an act of yours, on your own say, and it does not require your employer's agreement or anybody else's. What follows is written down in advance so that nobody has to work it out on the day.
Taking a way of working out of service is straightforward: it stops being available and nothing new runs it. Deleting every copy of the record is a second job, and it finishes on a second day, so you are given both dates rather than the convenient one.
- The day your notice arrives
- Nothing new starts under itA job already underway finishes, because stopping a machine mid-pass is its own hazard
- Out of service
- It stops being available and nothing new runs itThe first of the two dates you are told, and it comes when the job already running has finished
- Every copy gone
- The raw and the derived alike, backups includedDeleting every copy takes longer than taking it out of service, because backups run to a horizon. The later date is the one that means every copy
- What it costs you
- NothingNo penalty, no clawback, no fee for walking away. A right that costs money to use is not a right
- The withdrawal itself
- Stays on fileA record that deletes its own withdrawals cannot show it honoured one
You are told both dates, and the shorter one is never allowed to stand in for the longer one.
The covenant, clause five
A change of ownership should be a reason to withdraw, on its own.
The people who wrote these terms are the people you would be dealing with. If the company passed to somebody else, the terms would be in somebody else's keeping, and a person should not have to find that out from a letter after the fact.
You agreed to terms offered by particular people. If this company changes hands, that is a fair moment to decide whether you still want to be in it. The right to walk at that moment, on your own say, is one of the points the agreement is being built around, so that it does not depend on whoever ends up holding it.
What happens when you die is not written yet. How the half is split is.
Where a thing is not settled, this site says so rather than filling the gap with a sentence that sounds finished. One of the questions a person asks about the long run is not finished, and this page says so. The other is settled, and it is written out here so that silence is not read as an answer.
What happens to it when you die.
It is not written. No page on this site says what becomes of a licence, a count or a listing after the person whose way of working it is has gone, and no page here will invent one to fill the space. It is one of the points the agreement is being built around. When it is settled it goes on the covenant, which is the agreement itself, in plain words, and nobody is asked to sign anything before then.
What holds today is the part that always held: the technique was yours and was never ours to take, and a record we hold is held under licence rather than owned.
When more than one person's work is in one built thing.
A built thing is what a machine runs, made from admitted sessions, which are the ones that passed the checks on equipment and paperwork. More than one person's work can be in one of them, and being combined with others is its own separate agreement, asked for on its own, so nothing goes into one without your yes.
How the operator's half is divided when more than one person's work is in one built thing is settled: in proportion to each person's sessions in the built thing. The gross take is everything the owner pays before any cost comes off it, and the operators' share of that take is on the covenant.
When the first of those is settled, where this stands changes first, and the covenant carries the term after it. If you would rather be told than keep checking, say so when you write to us and you will be.
Where this standsWhat stays yours, whatever else changes.
Three things do not move, in any year, under any owner, and after any withdrawal: the technique, the name, and the way out.
There is nothing there to acquire. The technique stays in your hands and your career whatever the paper says, and an instrument that took it outright would extinguish the reason to keep paying you.
The covenant, clause four
The technique.
What you know is yours, in your own career, and we never ask to acquire it. A record of a day's work is held under licence. The skill that made the day is not in the record to be taken, and it walks out of the yard with you every night.
The name.
If a machine is working your way, it says so. The name is the point, and it stays attached to you. Nothing runs under a house name or a number, and no record is sold on to run under somebody else's.
The way out.
Give notice and nothing new starts under it. The job already running finishes, and that is the one delay in it. No penalty, no clawback, no fee for walking away, at the start of it or long after.
And nothing here stops you working, teaching, bringing on apprentices, or going somewhere else tomorrow. We never ask for that and we would not take it.
The skill goes home with you every night.
A record is held under licence. What made the record is yours, in your own career, and it is not ours to hold.
The ranch and the feedlot from the air in autumn · The group's own photograph
For the owner, the operator and the people who can say no.
A licence you have planned work around does not lapse because you traded a machine, as long as the new one is in the family it was taught on. It can end on the person's notice, and you are told the day the notice arrives and the day it comes out of service, so the next job can be planned around it. Your own operator teaching your own machine stays yours. A listing is not a resignation. The person stays where they are, on their own terms with you, and licensing a way of working changes nothing about their employment.
It is kept whole while it is licensed, it does not go stale when the fleet changes, you can be recorded again, and it earns on the days you are not in the seat. A day nobody chooses your name is a normal day and nothing is owed for it. You can end it on your own say, free, with two dates you are told. What happens to it when you die is not written yet, and this page says so rather than guessing.
Nothing about the passing years changes the order on the day. A way of working proposes and never authorizes, so a machine running one still needs a person in the seat and a person on the crew to clear the job, and anybody there can stop it.
The record is held under licence and never acquired. Ending is free, with two true dates, backups included, and the withdrawal stays on file. A change of ownership should be a reason to withdraw, on its own. The estate on death is a point the agreement is being built around. The division of the person's half where more than one person's work is in one built thing is settled, in proportion to each person's sessions, and the covenant carries it. The estate on death goes on the covenant in plain words before anyone is asked to sign.
Ask what the long run looks like.
If you want to know what a record of yours would be doing years from now, and which parts of it are still being written, write and ask. The next page is about what a machine that learns would be learning from, and what it still cannot do.