Crazy car carrier phobia...

Don't scared of them.. You should be more afraid of the teenagers and old folks than trucks. Period. We atleast have PROPER testS to pass to get our license. We all to a certain extint some more than most are professionals, we do this for a living. You do it to get to your living. Just remember when you or your family are making that 18 hour drive to Florida straight threw, we dont get to drive how ever long we want 11 hours is the best we can do, most of us dont even do that.. But my point is we are proffesionals we know our job aswell as you know yours. We'll do our job and you do yours and we'll both leave each other alone and not say one of us is possibly not doing our job is right. How would you like it if we all stood in your office and said "Dont think you stabled those papers right." "No thats wrong"? Basically you guys do us that way because the roads are our office and you guys drive around or behind or infront us and think/say we dont do our jobs right.

 

Yes there is!
First of all, I want to say that by being on this forum has helped me work off some karma and has given me some important insight that has allowed me to heal and be at peace with "that occupation". I also have come to realize how safety-conscious these truck drivers are and that I had the wrong attitude and a lot of misunderstanding concerning this. Their job is stressfull, dangerous and downright aggravating at times. Why they stay in the occupation, I'll never know...
After the truck accident with a family member, for the longest time I did not trust those chains that hook up to the trailers. The one that hit him somehow broke and the trailer veered into the lane he was traveling in. My last question regarding safety on the road is this: Do they ever safety-check this before going out on the road?
Also can I ask you this: Are you a car-hauler by chance?

 

I am a car hauler and have been hauling cars for 15 years. All truck drivers, regardless of the industry they are in, are required to do a safety inspection at the beginning of the work day, stop every 150 miles or three hours to check their truck and load, and inspect the truck and load at the end of the day. As car haulers, we all follow these rules and guidelines, not just for your safety and ours, but also because it helps to prevent damages to the vehicles we are hauling. A broken chain can drag on the roof of a car and dent or scratch it. It could also cause the car to bounce too much or shift position which could also damage the vehicle or the equipment hauling it. I personally make sure that if I have any doubts about a chain, strap, weld, hydraulic hose, tire, etc., it gets fixed or replaced before I leave the yard or truck stop. Aside from being a safety issue, if something breaks on the truck or trailer, it would slow me down and cause me delays which in turn costs me money. And it's all about the money, right? lol....

By the way, that picture below my name is an actual picture of my truck and one of the cars i have hauled.

 

Or the PTA mom flying down the highway in the 8000 pound suv while yapping on the cell,eating a yogurt and yelling at the kids in the back seat.

 

Looking at the picture, do you see how it can appear as if the car is angled toward the back? I'm wondering why they would have it at this acute angle... Wouldn't it be better to just have it on a straight level rack to reduce the chance of it rolling off?

 

The picture is of the car being loaded and secured with soft ties or wheel straps as some call them. The deck has to be down to load the car. Once loaded the car was lifted so that it was level. I took the picture because it was a cool car.
It is easier to soft tie a car when you can stand on solid ground. If I was going to use chains I would have lifted it up level so I could work underneath the car because that is where the slots for the chains are.

Even if the cars are at an angle there is no way the car is coming off because the chains and soft ties are more than strong enough to hold the weight.

But I don't think that's exactly what you are asking about. You wanted to know why the cars are at an angle when loaded and going down the road, right? Well, as car haulers we have to load 8, 9 or more cars, that by Federal Law, has to fit in to an area that is 75' long, 8' 1/2" wide and 13' 1/2" to 14' tall. If they are loaded flat and level, end to end, the cars would not fit. The load would be too long, too tall or both. By stacking the cars one over the other we can fit them all on and still be legal. Think about the shape of a triangle. If you had two triangles and you wanted to fit them in a box you would stack them on top of each other with the one on top backwards to the one below it and at an angle or slope. Most cars are shaped like a triangle to a car hauler with the nose or hood of the car lower and the trunk or rear hatch higher. By loading them at angles and nose first or nose back we can make them fit better. This is a really simplistic example but I think it gives you an idea about why the cars are loaded this way. In reality it us more like putting a puzzle together in which the pieces are always changing shape on you. Every load is different depending on what vehicles you have (ie. small car, big car, suv, small truck, full size truck, mini van, cargo van, gas or diesel , dually, canopies, etc.) and every year new models come out which means you have to change how you load your rig every year too.

If this is a long explanation and sounds complicated, that's because it is complicated. It takes 2 to 4 weeks of training just to learn how to build a load and make it fit legally, and about 2 YEARS to become comfortable and efficient at doing this. After this a car hauler is more of an "auto transport engineer" than just a truck driver. Driving the truck us the easy part.

I don't have 2 weeks to write down all the reasons why and how a car carrier is loaded a particular way as every truck is built differently from different manufacturers, every truck has to be loaded differently. Most car haulers are assigned a truck and they learn how that particular truck likes to be loaded. Knowing your truck is very important as it allows you to load faster, load safely, reduce possible damages and notice where things are wearing out and repairs need to be made.

Car haulers are not just your typical truck driver. They are extremely well trained and usually have many years of experience driving trucks even before they started hauling cars. They are very conscious of the load they are carrying because it is not unusual for them to have hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not over a million dollars, of vehicles on their truck. This is in addition to the cost of a car carrier it's self which cost $250,000 or more new.

So please don't be afraid of us car haulers. You may be worried about us but we are a lot more concerned about 4 wheelers and that rookie truck driver just out of trucking school.

 

Wow!
I appreciate you taking the time to answer this, put simply in layman's terms for the general public.
I wanted to talk someone who actually had experience hauling cars and I am more than satisfied with the answer. It makes sense that you would want to maximize the available space per load, also. What is it that they call those, moving parking lots?

 

Other truckers call us parking lots....car dealers sometimes call us convoys.....we just call ourselves car haulers or auto transporters.

 

Just a truck driver? What you tryin to say hoss?! Lol.

 

I saw one flip on its side on 75 in tn a few weeks ago only one broke off.