A motor grader operator from the Mendykarinsky district of the Kostanay region, Zhenis Zhumabayev, has made it into the top ten at an international championship for road construction machinery operators held near Moscow, according to infohub.kz.
The competition brought together 182 specialists from Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and China.
Zhumabayev advanced to the international tournament after winning the national contest, where he was named Kazakhstan's best motor grader operator. However, before the start, it turned out that tasks would have to be performed on an unfamiliar grader with fully joystick-controlled operation.
"Nobody told us what the tasks or equipment would be. We arrived, and the grader was entirely joystick-operated. We were given 10 minutes to get familiar with the machine. I was in shock," he said.
The work of a motor grader operator determines the profile of the future road. Even a few centimeters of error affect material consumption and pavement durability, so the competition primarily evaluates precision in machine control.
Participants had to navigate a slalom course, knock off chips with the blade without touching the barriers, perform maneuvers in reverse, and drive the grader into a simulated hangar.
Zhumabayev is 42 years old. He has been working with road machinery since age 17 and first sat behind the wheel of a motor grader at 23. He now works at the Mendykarinsky Road Maintenance Enterprise, part of KAZhservice LLP.
According to the operator, years of experience help in handling such machinery.
"I already feel the machine with my whole body — through vibration, the slightest change in blade position, how the equipment responds," Zhumabayev explained.
The enterprise will soon update its fleet, and Zhumabayev will switch from his familiar GS-1402 to a new Shantui.
Earlier, Kursiv Avto reported how a KTZ train driver stopped his train and saved a five-year-old child on the tracks.