Trailer Detachment Accident Sends 2 To The Hospital

They can write a guy up for operating with faulty equipment.
One time during a cold spell a guy set his brakes on the scales and a valve froze up. lol I had to go out there and thaw his rig out and that is what they wrote him up for. I felt sorry for him. lol

 

Are we sure that the actual reason he was cited wasn't for setting his brakes ON THE SCALES?

 

I don't buy the "equipment failure" either, more like a driver failure. I've rarely, if ever, in all my years of trucking, see a 5th wheel let go. Just by design, it can't. This wagon was "high hooked" and like starmac sez, you can go quite a ways before a bump pulls the pin out of the hole.

 

YES There is actually no law on the books against setting your brakes on the scale as far as I know, but I know exactly what they cited him for.

 

Um... okay, apparently that one fell flat on its face. I was trying to semi-sarcastically insinuate that they found a reason to cite him because his brakes got frozen up on the scales. You know, one of several good ways to piss off a scale master?

 

LOL well It did piss off the scales master and as far as I am concerned they were chicken shot for writing him up at all. The scale master had to stand on the other side of the truck in the coooold checking permits, till I got it thawed out. The guy was lucky he didn't get the death sentence. lol

 

I have seen king pins break off while truck is in motion... Albeit that BOTH occasions the truck hadn't made it out of the yard. We believed the cause in both cases was due to a combination of king pin wear and drivers slamming the 5th wheel into them to hard, thereby causimg a fracture that finished breaking once under load. This could be something similar.

 

A guy out of my terminal switched a set of doubles with a team from Georgia, they met in Kentucky. The guy out off my terminal made it another 100 miles until his rear trailer fell off. So that fifth wheel was locked from Georgia all the way into Ohio before it finally came apart.

Also a few months ago a r&l triples driver dropped the trailers off his fifth wheel, but luckily it got caught on the frame so it didn't drop off all the way. I remember it saying once he came to a stop that the jaws of his fifth wheel were gone!

 

We don't know anything, but my money is on it was high hooked or just not locked. he had not got up to speed yet, if he had been going fast at all, that landing gear would have folded and set the nose on the pavement.