Securement Question

I took a load of rental machines down to El Paso from Denver. Managed to score an easy reload from the same place going back to the same place in Denver,.. same rate.

So they are bringing these little scissor lifts over and loading them on the trailer. Having never done these before,.. I was all set to toss a strap through each of them,.. so I asked the guy,.. how do they secure these? Straps or chains? He said not allowed to use straps,.. chains only.

So,.. I'm looking at 8 baby electric scissor lifts and decided there is no way I am using 16 binders and chains,.. thats just ridiculous.

I looked things over and worked it out in my head,.. 4 chains and 4 binders. Easy peezy.

As I get about half way through,.. one of their drivers come over and gives me the "I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job,..." schpeal,.. to which I am usually open minded to learn something new,.. but he insisted I do it the way I did not want to do it and that was to chain and bind each one individually. After which I'm thinking to myself,.. he should mind his own business.

As nicely as I could I explained to him how I was doing it and that it would work perfectly. He asked what the owner of my company would say if one falls off. With as serious a face as I could muster, I told him,.. "I can promise you that if one of these falls off,.. the owner of this truck is going to say for me to push the rest of them off and keep going". He gave me a blank glazed look and walked away.

Now for some constructive criticism. I took some pics to post here and get some feed back. Firstly,.. I did not have any problems with this load. Traveled beautifully from El Paso back to Denver. POE open,.. green light,.. no hassles.

If what I did here is taboo or not right,. please explain what you would have done differently. I'm fine with negative comments.







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So,.. what say you?

Hurst

 

Not sure what your using to view it,. but if you click or tap on the images,.. they would enlarge some to get a better view.


Each lift has 2 chain eyelets on both sides.

I took a 30ft 3/8 chain,.. hooked to the chain pop out on my deck and dragged it through each chain eyelet,.. side by side. I used a snap binder to create tension at each 2nd lift and ended the chains with a loop through a stake pocket back to a final binder at the end of each side. Very tight,.. no wiggle room at all.

The only down side is that it would only take one of the binders to come loose and really cause a problem,.. because the tension I created was countered by tension from the opposite side of each lift. I used brand new out of the box bungee to wrap each binder from opening up. Its far from perfect. But I was confident with how I did it to run it. I checked on it often for the first few hours. After 4 hours of not even the slightest sign of coming loose,.. I then only checked on it during pee stops.

Hurst

 

You are right,.. and after I finished I thought about exactly that. Similar to how we use a single chain for 2 points of contact on the front of smaller loaders and back hoes etc. I know what you mean.

The tension between each binder is independent of the others and the chain between them is also. How ever,. if a chain broke,.. then yes,.. 2 of the lifts could come loose and fall out.

How ever,. and this is my thinking,. not always the most rational,.. the odds of a 900lb lift breaking a chain with a 5400lb wll rating while cruising down the road would have been something for Ripleys museum. It would have taken an accident or something incredibly severe to break the chain. I'm not arguing,.. and you are right. If I do these again,.. I will do it differently and make each segment independent.

Hurst