scary trailer load

[newbury]

Two stories
1. Just because it's not secured doesn't mean that the operator is a lunatic.
I've done things like drop something on the roof rack, driven less than a half mile at less than 15mph and had people get all concerned about my load. NEVER lost anything except a hat I forgot I put there.

2. I've just finished doing my bathroom floor with about 100 square feet of very high quality tile "found in the road". This was tile I had looked at but said it was to expensive. Found it JUST before I was supposed to start the project.
This was found at noon at a busy stoplight. I kept on going back but the subfloor, grout and thinset never did show up.


If you are good with loads you can often do DUMB things for short CAREFUL trips.

 

[Diamondpilot]

Worst I have seen is a guy in a S-10 taking a left turn and loosing about 6 or 7 of the 10 large welding/cutting cylinders. You know, the big 5' tall cylinders. All but 1 turned into a projectile when the valve got knocked off and the 3000psi or so of pressure sent them down the road wildly.

Chris

 

[afish]

I once saw a guy who lost a large load of drywall right in the middle of a busy intersection there was one of those humps in the road, the kind that if you where going to fast you would fell like your catching some air. Either way the drywall looked like fallen domino's across four lanes of traffic. Traffic was good and backed up. People where honking and yelling at the guy who was by himself as they drove over the drywall. Man he must have felt like the biggest idiot in the world. Its sights like that, that make me tie down all my loads. When I was a younger lad riding high speed wheelies I fell off the back of the bike the sight of my motorcycle doing flips down the road is another sight I dont ever want to see let alone a 7000# tractor. So I will continue to over tie down my loads because I don't ever want to be the guy that wipes out a family because my Kubota came through their windshield at 60mph.

 

[gordyy]

years ago I was delivering furniture. all in boxes tied down in a stake box truck got 60 miles up the road to unload and a new in box recliner setting on top of another nested together with a rope still directly over the hole that was left was missing.
unloaded called the store no it was all there, went back carefully looking for anything resembling a chair, found the empty torn up box with our stores name all over it customers name written all over it. Got back and watched my paycheck disappear for that week, went to a party at school that weekend the host found it unpacked it and took it home. I made sure he knew I had to pay for it then proceeded to drink at least that much beer of his over the course of a year.

 

[Tig]

I tie/chain everthing if I'm on a public road.

 

[RobertN]

Yeah, I wouldn't get to crazy binding a load like that down, But I sure wouldn't just go bare back.

Though now that I have the chain and binders, it would be so easy to throw one on the front and one on the back.

JB.

I have carried similar materials numerous times, especially 2x6 and 2x4 for concrete forms. I always throw a rope or ratchet strap(4" wide) over the front and back.

 

[ScottAR]

Just before I started work at a local home center. A man bought a french style patio
door unit. He and the crew loaded said door unit on a flat bed trailer door laying down.

The man secured the door unit to the trailer with, you guessed it, a bungee cord.

While traveling down the highway to his home in a neighboring town, The bungee cord
came unhooked. Upon hitting a bump in the highway, the door unit caught air and
flipped onto the roadway and frame and doors went their separate ways.

One door panel hit the pavement and bounced/sailed/lept into the other traffic lane
and into the windshield of a car. The lady driving the car was killed instantly.

The driver with the door unit did/is doing some jail time.

Be safe out there.

 

[tommu56]

There has been a lot of talk here lately about trailers, securing loads, how many binders ect.

Well, I saw a good one today!

Saw a guy pulling a 16' flatbed, that looked just like mine. 7000lb capacity, dual axle. He had what looked like a couple dozen 16' 2x6's on it. The 2x6's were banded together; looked like something the lumber yard might have done. The load though, was just sitting on the trailer. There were no ropes, no ratchet straps, no chains, no string.

Nothing was holding the load except gravity. I had to look twice, because I could not believe someone would do that.

Yikes

I got stopped by the police once with a full lift of plywood that looked the same way

They didn't see that I had about 10 1" steel bands around the load and through bed of the truck the officer had the ticket 1/2 written up for an unsecured load when he came back to the truck.
I pointed it out he handed me my paper work back and said that he was sorry and wouldent get a ticket.
I said the binders and chains were missing from the bin under the bed when I went to get them after the load was on the truck and saw the bander in the lumber yard and asked them if i could use some and they said sure help my self.

tom

 

[Travelover]

I was driving to Florida from Michigan a few years back and a large, thick sheet of ice blew off the roof of a motor home caught my windshield on edge. It bulged it in , but did not penetrate. Everyone inside was showered with the tiny pieces of glass from the inside half of the laminated glass. Motorhome was oblivious.

I pulled off at the next exit (looking though a small unbroken area), drove to a car wash and vacuumed the glass out of the inside as best I could, called to the next town for a glass shop. They met me outside, cut out the old windshield, popped in the new one and I was on the road in 15 minutes.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

 

[Wis Bang]

Dad always had a pickup and friends needing things moved. He always had a hank of manilla rope behind the seat. We tied everything! May have looked like the Beverly Hillbillies but it was tied fast...

When I drove the lowbed we had a winter w/ alot of snow and one customer was the water company for a small town. They wanted the roads to their wells plowed as their 4x4 trucks could not get in to check the wells & I was sent there w/ a D-4 to meet an operator that lived in that town.

We were on a dirt road in hilly country and some of the well roads were only a few feet apart but he was not allowed to drive onthe road so he would drive onto to the trailer & I would pick it up w/ the gooseneck only to stop and break things apart a 1/2 block later. The operator [he was union & I wasn't so I could not go near the machine] didn't bother to shut the dozer down! He just set the 'parking brake & wouldn't let me chain while we were on the dirt roads.

The last well was 'just' around the corner [I've never been on this road] & turning the corner meant we started downhill. Well the machine rolled back, only a foot or so. and slammed into the backside of the gooseneck. Shook the whole truck & it looked like the operator was gonna jump! He had the door open b/4 he realized it wasn't moving any further.

Didn't dent the D-4 or the trailer, and the boss said it would have been the operator's butt not mine but I can still picture the possibility of that D-4 sliding off the trailer & rolling all the way to the botom...