This is why you always tug test with pictures.

Hands in the oilfield hate checklists, because they already know it all. I used to tell them: "Even astronauts need a checklist."

 

i also have a system. visually check that the 5th wheel is locked and tugging against the trailer to see if the brakes work is part of it.

i completely restart my system if i get distracted.

 

This is why the really smart people work in the office. Then they don't have to worry about stuff like this.

 

In my chicken hauling daze I rarely ever dropped my trailer. Would stay hooked up for weeks if not months at a time.

 

I agree, this was not the result of a failed tug test, usually, it just drops the wagon on the dollies, to fold them under, it had to be dropped by a moving yard horse. I saw this happen once, yard horses have a different kind of 5th wheel, you push a button to open the jaws, hook up, and release the button, locking the 5th wheel. The one I saw, the guy driving it, didn't know that, and just backed under like a regular truck. He dropped the loaded wagon going about 15 mph, ( made an awful sound) and the dollies didn't fold like that, perhaps he was lucky. One thing for sure, today, to bring a wrecker out like that costs BIG bucks. Wonder why they all have new trucks?

 

I kind of see a connection between all those new wreckers and the lines of new trucks along the shoulder waiting to be towed to the dealer. If they even started to get out of the yard. Back when new trucks ran wreckers were something that had been wore out once each as a tractor and a gravel truck before it got a wrecker built on it.

 

This one reason why all the old dollies had wheels.

 

Back when my father in laws uncle and cousins had their trailer repair shop. Dolly repair and replacement was the number one repair. Floor damage from forklifts was second with upper body belt and roof strike damage third. Fresh Purple heart wood being burned in with torch around a bolster plate is an unforgettable smell.
They had contract with Yellow, Roadway, Merchants, SMT, Central, and HEB were the big ones back then. Many of us and lots of kids in the Kirby area worked there part time thru the high school vocational trades program.
I remember back then and before they closed shop a huge pile of mangled scrap dollies of all makes in the back yard.

 

"Driver Lessons".
I've done numerous "tug testing" without air lines hooked, gear down and wheels chocked while it was being loaded, as well when Trailer "Locked to Dock", also have gently DROPPED TRLR while being Loaded. Never heard anything from dock personnel.
Same with running Switcher Trucks.
Post NOT intended to imply Sarcasm.

 

Alrighty then, That's the new swift European "automatic gear raising/lowering" model except it's obviously defective.