Heavy Haul Miscellaneous Thoughts, Ideas and Questions

I've got myself into trouble a couple times lately. Turn onto the road where I'm going to pick ip/deliver. Drive past the address, either by accident, or maybe wanting to come in from the other direction. Or miss the road, and turn on the next one to turn around.

Either way the roads I was on rapidly turned from decent paved roads to goat paths. I don't really have a solution yet, but it hasn't been good decision making.

I know a couple bad times were the result of wrong addresses from dispatch. But I'm still the captain of the ship. I think

 

If you can make the time, try using Google street view and satellite veiw before leaving the shipper. This way you can familiarize yourself with the area long before you arrive for the first time.

 

I figured that was going to be on my to learn list too.

Unfortunately I don't always have the luxury of knowing where I'm going next. I HATE being empty at 10 am and dispatch saying drive 300 miles to reload, oh they close at 2 pm

 

I am trying to figure out how to say this in a way that makes sense, so bear with me.

Ever see one of those guys at the billiard tables that hits a ball in a pocket, but also sets up his next shots at the same time? It seems as if he never misses and his opponent loses without ever even getting the chance to play.
Well, these guys that pull the big loads do that. It seems like they don't miss. They can't afford to miss.
If you are making a turn on a road that doesn't have enough room for you to pull forward to lock a spreader, you weren't paying attention. You were looking at this one ball and not setting up for your next shot. Hammer wasn't trying to be a prick. He's telling you the truth.

See, there's a whole bunch that you have to learn in order to safely do that job. I'm not saying that you can't drive, I'm just saying that driving is the easy part.

(This is the part that I am having trouble getting into words)
There are no tricks. You have a big load on a big trailer. You have a turn to make in a city. You have 1 shot to set up this turn. You take everything in, the light poles, signs, traffic, stop lights, curbs...etc, and know which way to go ON THE FLY.
Same thing goes when you get sent down some goat trail. Or some 13%grade. How do you know which gear to be in? Or what part of the road. How do you avoid the obstacles? What do you do when you can't make it through? See, this is actually why I had the questions about these guys in school because I realized that we all had things in common.

We are problem solvers. That's what we get paid to do. What's the problem? Well someone has a load that's this big, this heavy, this long, this tall and they need it transported. Okay, got it. If you can pick it up and put it on the trailer, we can haul it.

Now someone is thinking, "don't you guys get pilot cars and police escort with the really big loads? Doesn't that make it easier?"

Pilot cars and police are for public safety. You, the driver, still have to know how to set up your turns. With or without traffic, you still have to clear trees, bridges, signs, RRXX...etc. You have to really know how to read the road. And that only comes through practice.

 

I have a question...

Georgia put those electronic signs up like Louisiana that will say TRUCK MUST ENTER WEIGH STATION or TRUCK BYPASS WEIGH STATION. Usually, the OPEN or CLOSED sign is blank.

How do you know whether or not the weigh station is open if the sign doesn't say OPEN?

 

No open lite up I forget to stop.
Now there might be that fine print sign posted on the pine tree in the edge of the woods that says open. Then I go in

 

I went into a GA weight station awhile back. Upon approaching I couldn't find anything showing they were open or closed. When I pulled on the scales there was a officer outside in a car and he looked at me like "what in the world are you doing"? There was nobody inside the scale house so I just eased on down the road.

 

On the TN I65 scales at Portland, there is a scale entrance off of hwy 31 going behind the scales, to catch people trying to bypass. We go through there pretty often as there is a factory we service right down the road. The sign just says "all trucks must enter" and no indicators if open or not. Lots of times you'll pull in there and they will be closed but you can't tell until you pull in. If they are open they will rake you over the coals because they think you were trying to bypass.

Another thing TN will do is turn on and off the open/closed sign between trucks, I assume this is to control congestion at the scales. If I ever see so much as a flash of "closed", I'll blow by.

In TN, I love pulling permit loads. Standard practice is to pull around back and bring in your permit. More times than not they will just glance at your permit and send you on your way. It seems they are paying more attention to the trucks going across the scales. You also can't fit in the inspection barns if you are too wide.

You are also less likely to get stopped going down the road because there's usually not enough shoulder to fit a oversize.

Bottom line is most officers see a oversize load as just too much trouble to deal with and most of them aren't real sharp on permitted loads regs. The down side is, if they do mess with you they are going to try their best to nail you.

 

Can anybody ID this light?
It has a plug for a charger, but no name on it.
I have a couple of chargers that might work,but would like to see some specs.

 

No, but I like them...