We Lost Another One-R.I.P. Driver

With flatbed’ng, you can get away with a lot of shortcuts and task omissions .... as long as your crystal ball tells you everything will go smoothly and there will be no surprises anywhere between point A and point B .... and your crystal ball is never wrong .., and assuming you have a crystal ball.

Otherwise you better just do your job properly. If you can’t be bothered with a little additional work, every time, then flatbedding is not for you. Stick to slamming doors.

 

Im sure.

I just pulled a number out of a hat considering some of the loads ive hauled.

Ive already survived one near miss from a head on near Stoney Ridge Oh back about the mid 90's with a steel load (Beams) and that one would have gone through the cab. I had a good headache rack as well, but it was secured to frame with just two half inch U bolts that would have snapped so easily as the load came through.

 

You should watch a guy named super trucker dan on YouTube. He has a video of a car cutting him off, the steel bars behind his bulkhead he built snapped the dunnage in half.

Lots of times the steel or whatever your hauling isn't all going to be the same exact length so not every piece is necessarily going to be up against the bulkhead.

Besides the fact, once the slightest bit of momentum gets it to start moving its gonna go regardless if you have a bulkhead.

 

Okay. Don’t use bulkheads. I don’t care one way or the other. I’m not saying they are going to prevent death in every situation but I am saying they can often prevent a bad situation from becoming catastrophic IF DONE RIGHT.

 

I dont think so, not in a "panic stop". Not to say they are useless. The chains on the front would do better than a headache rack or traditional bulkhead at the front of the trailer.

The chains on th front would help it keep it from moving in the first place and would also have a cumulative effect with the tiedowns. The best you can do is try keep the load from moving ,because once it starts to move its alot harder to stop.

More tiedowns to increase friction is what's going to help, or chains and a dunnage bulkhead placed directly in front to try and prevent it from moving is the best that can be done
Once it starts moving then that's it. Not much is going to be able to stop a moving mass of steel. Even a 45-50k "legal load" on a typical 5 axle truck.

I tried looking for a number of tiedowns in the photo but It was hard to see how many were there. I would guess he had at least the legal requirement to be considered "safe". But I don't think doubling the legal requirement would have helped in this situation.

Open deck is dangerous.

 

LOL.

I'm just saying it isnt a cure all. Not trying to argue.

I do agree I does help, I use one when I can. Obviously every load that isnt a option.

 

Seeing this makes me think of all the steel coil or paper roll loads I hauled in a dry van. Once that load gets momentum,that’s it.

 

Did you see the video of a van hauling paper rolls around a sharp corner? It was posted a while ago.

The driver seemed to jerk the wheel abruptly and all the rolls just ripped through the side and spilled out over the road. One plowed through a fire hydrant like it wasn't even there.

 

Yup. Good times!! I actually had a paper roll load shift on me once along I-85 in South Carolina near Florence a few years back because some moron cut me off trying to make an exit.