load securement violations no longer part of cargo BASIC

The only thing I can figure....and I have spent some time giving the rule makers the benefit of the doubt.....is that with a direct tie down, they must be concerned with overloading the anchoring point on the trailer. I have no idea if this is true, and I have never seen it explained anywhere...this is just my theory so here goes:

For simplicity's sake, let's say 2 cross chains on the back of a 20,000 lb machine with a direct tie down system will load the trailers' TWO tie down points with the full force of the machine under a hard stop.

If an indirect tie down system was used, then the same force would be spread over FOUR of the trailers' tie down points.

If this is true, it really has nothing to do with the WLL of the chain at all.

 

^^^^ Exactly. The chains WLL is the same no matter how its secured to the trailer or the cargo. Just more crazy regs to try and understand. I got a ticket for not enough tie downs. I had a loader on and cross chained the front and back and one on the bucket, 5 chains in all which i thought was good for my 40k load but the the dot cut the working load on 4 of them in half and made me add 1 more chain. BS is all it is.

 

Not a 40,000 lb machine but had the same thing happen here. Two drivers running together pulling the exact same loads secured the exact same way. They both got pulled in and inspected at the same time, both got tickets, both got put OOS, both put on another chain and went on down the road. That was a bad day for CSA points.

 

That's a bet you'd lose. I have a habit of over-securing things rather than under securing. Even the broom & shovel I keep on my catwalk are secured with a pair of 1" straps....not the typical tarp straps so many use without realizing that tarp straps have no WLL and therefore cannot be used to secure cargo or equipment.

And as for the direct vs. indirect securement and its effect on the WLL of the chain, it makes perfect sense if you stop and think about how things work. Just like when you're 4-wheeling and need to winch yourself out, if you run the cable out to a pulley attached to a tree and then back to your truck's bumper, you have twice as much pulling force available to you as you would if you had just attached the hook at the end of the cable to the tree....just like lifting a load with a block and pulley....and the same works with the chains holding that equipment. The load has to exert twice the force upon the chain to break it if it is attached to the trailer at both ends as it would if the chain only went from the trailer to the load. If the WLL is figuring on the chain going over/through the load while being attached to the trailer at both ends, then you'd have to adjust the WLL if you tie one end of the chain to the load.

 

So you're saying that the increase in pulling force you get from a block and tackle equates to a reduction of the force applied to a chain in a sudden stop. I need think about that some more before I can agree to that.

For starters, we aren't using pulleys when we secure therefore a better comparison would be to remove the pulley from your tree analogy and just run the chain around the tree and back to the truck. I'm sure you will agree that if you do this, you don't get twice the pulling force. You have effectively "pinned" the chain to the tree, creating the effect of having two smaller chains. Agreed?

 

stop all this thinking before i get more confused than normal.

 

You seem to know a thing or two about securing loads, mind telling me how I secured this one?




The thing I find funny about the indirect/ direct chain down bit is, according to the DOT, if I run a chain over the tracks on an excavator I get twice the rating on the chains versus running from track to deck. Yeah, that will work well.

 

If coils and pipe were secured somehow by direct securement (impossible, I know), load shifting incidents would be extremely rare. Proper direct securement is akin to bolting or welding the load directly to the trailer. Direct securement is worlds safer. On my end, the closest thing we see to a coil is crane counterweights. Flat painted hunk of steel with lifting eyes, average between 18000-25000lbs. Guys throw straps over the tops of these things all the time. I sure hope you dont have to do any hard braking, because when that thing moves, those straps wont even slow it down.

Whenever you can do a direct securement, do it.

Was loading a dump truck chassis when one of my guys came up and asked me how to secure the thing. He had asked another driver and the driver told him to run his chain from the pocket, through an eyehole, back to a pocket, binder. I asked him why would you do an indirect securement on a piece of machinery. He didnt know what indirect and direct securement was. I ran his chains pocket, eyehole, binder in the middle, slide the rest of the chain to the other side of the trailer, pocket, eyehole, binder. 40000 lb load, 8 points, 4 chain 8 binders. Its not going anywhere.

 

I couldn't have secured 40,000 lbs with 4 chains. I'm pretty sure I would have picked up ~36 CSA points from the NY state troopers.

 

...And WHY do we care about BASIC or even CSA? I ask people all the time, give me specifics of a few BS CSA points costing you anything. Not speculation but tell me if you were denied a job or pay more for insurance because a few cops got small man complex and wrote you BS tickets.