WinterDeere
Elite Member
I got to see an Oxygen bottle launch thru a vehicle, and fly down the road, ca.1992. I was working register (high-school job) at a gas station at a busy intersection of two multi-lane roads, where we had frequent accidents. After awhile, you develop an ear for the sound of a skid that's leading to a collision, versus the dozens of others you'd hear each day of someone just stopping short.
Anyway, one day I hear one of "those" skids, clearly someone trying to stop... hard. I look out the window just in time to see a work van rear-end a car that stopped in front of him. Then I see a 60" tall bottle take off out the back of the van, and go flying up the street behind him, as the oncoming cars swerve off the road to avoid the thing.
Story I got was that the guy was too lazy to install his safety cap, and just had his whole oxy-acetylene torch rig laying down in the back of the van, regulators pointing forward. When he rear-ended the car in front of him, the whole cart slid forward, and the oxy bottle regulator snapped off when it hit the mounting bracket under the driver's seat. The whole bottle took off out thru the back door of the van, and although I couldn't leave the register to go inspect for myself, someone had said it left a pretty near-perfect Ø10 inch hole in one of the back doors.
That said, I still transport all of my bottles laying down flat. I put the bottom of the bottle against the front wall of the pickup bed, lay the bottle down, and run a pair of straps as an "x" across them to the lower pad eyes in the bed. If a bottle seems like it wants to slip, such a small diameter bottle that doesn't provide enough vertical drop on the strap, I just run a single loop around it with each strap. But I also ALWAYS remove the regulator and install the safety cap when a bottle isn't strapped into the cart.
Anyway, one day I hear one of "those" skids, clearly someone trying to stop... hard. I look out the window just in time to see a work van rear-end a car that stopped in front of him. Then I see a 60" tall bottle take off out the back of the van, and go flying up the street behind him, as the oncoming cars swerve off the road to avoid the thing.
Story I got was that the guy was too lazy to install his safety cap, and just had his whole oxy-acetylene torch rig laying down in the back of the van, regulators pointing forward. When he rear-ended the car in front of him, the whole cart slid forward, and the oxy bottle regulator snapped off when it hit the mounting bracket under the driver's seat. The whole bottle took off out thru the back door of the van, and although I couldn't leave the register to go inspect for myself, someone had said it left a pretty near-perfect Ø10 inch hole in one of the back doors.
That said, I still transport all of my bottles laying down flat. I put the bottom of the bottle against the front wall of the pickup bed, lay the bottle down, and run a pair of straps as an "x" across them to the lower pad eyes in the bed. If a bottle seems like it wants to slip, such a small diameter bottle that doesn't provide enough vertical drop on the strap, I just run a single loop around it with each strap. But I also ALWAYS remove the regulator and install the safety cap when a bottle isn't strapped into the cart.
Hence my small welder cart...