Question for the old time car haulers.

Jack Cooper sure does pay well but #### some of those trucks still have horses tied to the front still

 

They still have a few of the old white Allied Sterling's in Minneapolis. They are no longer White, but peach colored from all the rust running off the rack onto the body work.

 

In Jack Coopers defense, when I started there they had recently acquired a huge amount of business from GM that Allied gave up. They also acquired all of the Allied drivers who hauled the GM traffic and they acquired none of the rigs. Therefore they pulled every truck out of the weeds that they owned and put it in service. While they still have a lot of older rigs in service they have replaced a bunch in the last few years. If I were still a company driver I would take an older rig with a larger total compensation package than a brand new rig and less money. But that is just me and not all drivers are alike. I eventually got this rig and while it isn’t as nice as my Pete is was a very good carhauler.

 

I meant to address this... Used cars seem to move around much more out of sync than new. I'm guessing related to the various states of wear on the shocks. I know I leave a lot more room around high-mileage units than I normally do for new, just based on the motion I see on the headrack unit.

 

Well the quickest way to get fired was to have damages on any of the vehicles. It did happen at times, but it better not happen often.
The thing that got me is kids that liked to throw rocks at us.

 

I really like how you have safety cables, one of the guys I worked with fell off the upper deck and died.

 

They are definitely important in my opinion.

 

The type of tie downs for the cars have changed. You had r hooks and T hooks and S hooks.and you would go right into the frame or various places. Pull the entire vehicle down it didn't rock around as much. Now I see, they're using wheel straps and that leaves the car able to rock back-and-forth and forwards, and backwards, I retired. I got out of it before the wheel straps, and i'm glad I did.

I never thought of it as feeling the car's moving around. But the trailer, truck all itself, but the big thing was, the chains. I had so many chains. It was easy to wind up with one coming off the truck and dragging the ground had to keep a good eye out or you'd lose a good chain. And the smallest piece of damage a scratch cost north of $500. That was like the cheapest damage you could have. You can't have many. Or they won't keep you. You really have to be careful. It's a lot of money on these vehicles. Especially when they're new. One of the things I miss the most is having that head rack, the top vehicle pulled down in your line of sight.There were times I'd have a great big vehicle up there and to pull it down so hard, only had about a foot or so of vision between the hood and the bottom of the rack.

I had a Pete with a Boydstun hauler was my first truck. Then a Pete with a Cottrell they sat higher than some others so I was always watching my hight. I ran loads out of a rail head for a couple years and just went outlaw. St Louis to Kansas City heavy on my drives over hight cause we started taking an extra Durango. I would dodge Odessa if they were open and I had to exit the Interstate at one exit go over the top of the overpass and get back on, I was too high for the clearance. But it paid pretty good, 1800 dollars for 550 miles. There and back. I would deadhead back most of the time. But if I did find a load it paid even more. LOL

One time when the Jeep Patriot first came out, I was loading, the first one was backed on and went over the cab so I got all the way to the front, about 2-3 feet short of the pockets, and I hear the engine rev louder, so I mash down on the brake a little harder and the engine revs louder again so now I'm a little worried, I could launch off the front backwards and smash the ground. So I push down on the brake again, same thing the engine revs louder again. So I'm trying to stay calm but this engine is screaming by now. I'm guessing My foot must be cross the brake and gas pedal at the same time. I have my boots on, but out of all my years this has never happened before. I'm thinking parking brake, through it up to neutral, turn key off something, but all I could think of clearly is launching off the front backwards and smashing into the ground.

Pasha was the most difficult loads to put on. Those are the military guys, when they are deployed over seas their stuff usually went to storage, household items and cars too. The higher ups had their cars sent overseas to them. But they are all different, different weights, hights, lengths everything. Very hard to be sure you were loading them legal. Take 10 different guys and you get 10 different, quite a bit different cars. And if your over on an axle you might have to unload almost the entire load. Not a good thing. You just had to wing it sometimes.

 

When I did used, I had curb weights of late models imprinted somewhere in my brain. But it was handy, a couple minutes of scratching a pencil and I could usually tell you within 500 lbs what my gross would be. Rentals you had remember to pad a bit because they'd always be full of fuel. And those oddball loads that made you peek at the suspension pressure before you finished loading the belly to make sure you hadn't totally fubar'd the weight distribution because you changed load order 5 times from where you started in your head.

 

My first couple carhaulers were chain trucks and if I had to go back on a chain truck I would retire. 6 or 7 trucks on todays modern rigs with straps is much easier than loading a chain truck. Nothing I load is too close that I worry about it bouncing in to another unit. The old PMT baby blue rig is chain and the Red Pete definitely is not.