Heavy haul Chicken vs. Egg

Take a monster crane.

Put the boom on one flat. Weights on another, One tread on a third. Other tread on the fouth, Boom hooks and doodads on the fifth. Cables on a sixth...

 

when the phone rings and you don't have the equipment, you don't get the job!

 

What I love is being told i have too much experience or qualification.

I sit in a mixer construction company back home one day in the office surrounded by macks and Lowboys for TBH company in Maryland (18 wheelers and cement mixers) and the Veep idiot actually tells me a bald faced lie that the class A in my pocket is too much qualification.

I should have taken them to court, but I was not yet experienced in such matters. But I learned.

When I emigrated to Arkansas, the following monday after renewal a ready mix had me rolling under a load before dawn, not even 3 days in state at my new home.

 

The right tool for the job. Sure they will be impressed when we show up with a self steering Faymonville. But at the end of the day when a spread axle step deck would of made the job so much easier. Now who feels a fool.

Like me right now. My last Vancouver load was decent besides the hiccup with the spread. We made it work because that's what we do. I'm on my way back and do I have a spread? Nope. A tridem 48' flatbed.

 

I wasn't tagged but I'll chime in. Many of those really large trailers take a fleet of flats, steps, trucks just to support that one trailer. Might take a half dozen trucks to get the trailer in position to be built then move. Once they are in place the legal trailers get stacked up and either go home to wait till the big guy gets to his destination to go pick him back up or wait till the next time he needs moved. You have the traction weights for the push/pull trucks, the deck sections, neck extensions, dollies and all the rest.

Then there's a crane move, a few heavy haul trucks, one very heavy haul for the house and dozens of flats/steps to move all the rest of the gear. We moved a crane from Arlington, TX back to it's laydown yard in Gary, IN many years ago after it lifted the roof on Jerry's playpen and that was over 100 "legal" size loads alone. I made 8 trips with a 4 axle truck and 3 axle lowboy hauling 1 counterweight each trip and there were 2 of us just moving those. There were at least 50 loads of boom sections (probably closer to 100) and who knows how many loads of "fall offs", the nuts and bolts that hold the whole thing together.

I worked for another company that specialized in pre-stressed concrete buildings and bridges, we had 6 trucks and 50+ trailers. Those sat around for months at a time, all stacked up to take up less space then when it came time to move a building, they would all get loaded with pieces, moved to the job site, staged, then as they unloaded, stacked up, brought back to the yard and parked till time for the next one. We built a packing plant in Hereford, TX that took over 300 loads. When it came time for a bridge, same thing, the whole bridge would get loaded onto stretch flats and taken to the job site then stacked up and brought back to wait on the next one.

 

KP, in my case, I started out with a lowbed and jeep + scraper dolly. Then I bought an old short tiltbed. Then I acquired a 48' flat and a 35' stepdeck, all cheap. Then the 2nd truck came along and another lowbed then more stuff and eventually a 3rd truck and the 9 axle. My reason for the 48' flat and the step was to have some versatility and stay busy. While they didn't produce a lot of revenue, they allowed me to bid on bigger jobs that I could do without hiring an outside truck to help. Most companies I was familiar with, started small, moving drilling rigs where one needed 3 trucks & 10-12 trailers for a small rig move.