scoop driver

English

Etymology

From scoop +‎ driver.

Noun

scoop driver (plural scoop drivers)

1. (machinery) One who operates the scoop that stokes a coal-based generator.
   • 1896, William John Atkinson Butterfield, Gas Manufacture: The Chemistry of, page 49:

     The chief stoker who holds the handle and manipulates the scoop is known as the scoop-driver.

   • 1898 May 10, R. Watson, “Charging Apparatus for Small Works”, in The Gas Engineer's Magazine, volume 14, number 264, page 187:

     An unskilled man may, with very little practice, soon qualify himself as a scoop-driver — indeed, men who have been in the retort-house comparatively a few days have, within that short time, been able to do the charging in cases of emergency.

   • 1901, Fletcher Wilson Stevenson, Modern Appliances in Gas Manufacture, page 13:

     When the scoop is opposite the mouth of the retort, the scoop-driver drives the machine, and the impetus obtained by the 5 ft. tribution of coal in the retort, which is obtained with a scoop as compared with charging by shovel.

2. (mining) One who operates an automated mining scoop.
   • 1983, United States. Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, Decisions - Volume 5; Volume 66, page 717:

     After expressing a desire to be a scoop driver, Mr. Collins trained him for this job and Mr. Amburgey began operating the scoop " a couple of weeks " after the opening of the Number 9 mine.

   • 2014, Ninie Hammon, Black Sunshine:

     "Got to go, boys," he said, interrupting an impassioned sermon by the scoop driver about the lineage of the University of Louisville's quarterback.

   • 2015, Andy Timblin, A Life Worth Living:

     Each section had a foreman, a repair man, a miner operator, and a miner helper, two bolt men, two shuttle car drivers and most of the time, a supply man and a scoop driver. The scoop driver would clean up all the loose coal the mining machine couldn't get.