Are you serious, an unsecured load ! Banning Scales

What I was referring to was not making sheet up. If it's in black and white its a write up. Tiedowns are damaged, it's a write up. If its a potato chip box in a enclosed trailer.............it's not unsecured.

 

For a few months I was hauling super sacks on pallots of raw ground copper out of Helena Mt, This was way back when I frist started hauling with a van.

I was smart enough to bring a couple of blocks of wood with me and I would load 8 pallots in the front of the trailer against the front, and the remaining 10 would go directly above my trailer axles.

On the 10 over my trailer axles I would put 2 straps from wall to wall holding the pieces of 2x4 I had cut against the front of the sacks, then I would put 2 load locks up against it as well, id do the same behind both.

Never had an issue, but one of the guys I was running with decided to load his the same way and not secure it, on one of the trips he had just had his trailer washed out and everything inside was wet, coming off of lookout he slammed on his brakes and everything slid forward about 12 feet. He rolled across the spokane poe with something like 47,000 lbs on his drives.

Got him nailed for unsecured cargo and overweight. Luckily for him I was running a couple of hours behind him, and I had a pallot jack with me. took 45 minutes to get his load back in place, he had to bobtail over to the J in post falls to buy a couple of load locks, I think he sold the ones he had on the truck because he was broke.

 

DB, Its just common sense, if the strap is worn, the driver knows its worn. He/She should get a ticket. I have seldom been hassled by scales,DOT. Some times the officer is wrong but, they are human, mistakes are made. You folks are doing a job that is very important and most of you do it well.

 

In the case of an accident those load locks laying peacefully in the back of a enclosed trailer are now missiles, that are airborne toward the front of the trailer and very well may have enough energy behind then to exit thru a wall depending on the type of trailer.

What I was taught was to place them across the trailer, and tighten them up, or secure them under the trailer or to the rear of the cab, but secure them. WHy would you blame the inspector, your the one caught being lazy. But I still doubt the story.

 

i doubt very seriously that a set of loadlocks that you can bend by hand would find its way thru a steel bulkhead or out the back doors

 

But you see, your adding something you don't know. You have no idea of what kind or type the load locks are. The one's in my garage are made out of steel square stock and would likely go thru the skimpy skin on a dry van, probalm not the plywood under the door skins.

When not given the type on the trailers or the locks you have to assume the worst. In any case if its inside the trailer it needs to be secure.

 

I am going to chime in on this note as well. Something I was really big on is I would perform maintanence on my securement gear. When my binders would start to get beat up a bit I'd paint them. I would also paint my hooks when they started to rust. I carried extra cotter pins with me, and I would frewuently replace them.

I also carried an assortment of hooks, shackles and other securement goodies with me for edge protection, and so on and so forth.

No only when I put something on the trailer would I secure it according to the rules, but I would also make sure it looked pretty. You can secure something and have it look like the south end of a north bound Rosie O'Donnel, and it will be legal, but it will look like crap.

It really isnt that hard to take a few steps back, look at your load and see weather or not you have it secured properly.

I also find it interesting that so many people want to ##### and whine about how heavy 3/8" chains are. The smallest chain I had on my truck was a grade 70 3/8", the largest were 2 pairs of 1/2" grade 100 12' long.

That gets you a 15,500lb WLL per chain. That means with 4 chains I could secure 62,000 lbs, seeing as how the most I could stuff on the trailer was about 48,500 that meant it was real easy to do 150% securement.

using a 5/16" grade 100 you only have a 5700lb WLL So you would need 12 chains to secure the same load.

Mainly though my standard loadout say if I had 2 all terrain forklifts on the trailer, id use the 1/2" chains on the rear of the machines X'ed to either side of the trailer, and then id use a 3/8" to the front. The reason for this was if I had a colliscion I wanted to make sure those machines wernt coming forward into my truck!

I know im getting off on another one of my little rants here, but the moral of the story is, if you secure your load right, and you make it look good, you show you are willing to do the extra effort to do it right, the DOT isnt going to waste a lot of his time looking at you because there are plenty of raging dumb dumbs out there who are much easier targets and they are able to easily find violations on them.

 

that has been around for years the P.U.C. always stood for ....Pay us cash!

 

If you can show where in the law it says "If you think it won't go thru the front of the trailer, securement is not required" then your right. Untill then you may get a ticket.

 

On that note, not every load a guy hauls is going to need to be secured with load locks...

I am a big fan of organization, everything having its place, everything being neat and tidy. Having a set of load locks rattling around inside of your trailer is probably going to beat them up and could cause them to fail prematurely.

Is it really that hard to stuff em up in the front of the trailer when you arent using them?