It's easy to sneer... 3/4? 170-ft? Golly, one time we did something a lot longer and a lot fatter. Sure you did - and for every such pull, you did hundreds of nice, short runs.
Liability? Huh? Please elaborate, with complete case citation, where it was successfully argued that someone committed a 'wrong' because they used a $25 Wal-Mart vac and taped a water bottle to the hose as a reducer to the pipe.
You said a "typical large pull" not a typical pull.
As to liability issue. I think you're going a bit overboard, and I can think of no case exactly like that ... but you already knew that.
You mad, bro?
I did though, see another contractor's employee using a homemade wire pulling contraption with a drill motor hooked up to a pulley system. He got his finger in between a belt and a pulley and cut his finger off.
The Contractor's Workman's Comp Insurance went up drastically.
Then there's always the thing about the tool's reliability, and the resultant labor costs of downtime when a cheap tool breaks and the job comes to a screeching halt.
