Post your flatbed load pictures here

Great advise when one can turn it around, but most of the time, shipper yards don't have that much room, so very little choice. Or nothing around and wind keeps changing direction. Gotta love tarping. Atleast your where it's almost warm.

 

I just negotiate my way out of there. As long as the weather is nice enough I can usually get down the road and find a hole to hide in or a hill to hide behind. If you take full liability for it and tell them you'll tarp it as soon as you can find a sheltered spot, a lot of places will let you go.

 

You're exactly right. Shipper forced me to move to open area on road away from the warehouse that loaded me so they could load another truck. Luckily the wind was mostly from one directional area, but that only works for half the tarping.

I do the job as ordered Kaji, the broker wanted the load tarped...it gets tarped right there...I do not assume liability as a company driver and don't expect my employer to pay for a bad judgement call on my part. I wasn't complaining about the tarping in the wind, just stating a fact. It's been 11 months since I've been doing it, so it kind of kicked my butt, but I did it as well as an out of shape old man could. I rolled on the tarp a lot and shouted to the wind "I've got all ####### day".

 

Yes specially when you're only 110lbs tyring to use 8ft drop lumber tarps in a 35mph wind. My body is not built for traping.

 

Caxpt,you know there's a trick?
Unroll your tarp on top off the load.
Throw a strap near the begining and the end off the tarp.
Tightend the straps very lightly.
Secure the tarp in 4 places lenghtways.
The pull the sides down under the straps.
Secure.

How this helps someone.

 

It works, and I've done that before. Also having some rope on all 4 ends helps quite a bit so you can tie them to the rub-rail and then worry about the bungees. It also comes in handy with pulling the tarps over from the ground

 

Oops after re-reading your message it dawned on me what you meant. Yeah, I could have done that. I did something similar to that when folding tarps up in Colorado 4 years ago. Put bungees across a step deck every few feet and pulled the tarps under them to hold them down and keep it folded.

Anyway, it didn't beat me and I lived. So all's good. I'm built like a paperweight, so the tarp wasn't going anywhere as long as I laid on it.

 

Now that's what I should have done. I've done that before. Just didn't think of it and didn't have any rope this time.

 

I have 10" of rope permenantly titled to all 4 ends of my tarps at the corner d-rings just for this reason. I learned that truck from CPape's father last winter

 

sorry to go off topic guys. I have recently begun to pull a spread axle trailer and I have a question about the dump valve. When pulling into the driveway where I'll be parking the truck on hometime there is a slight down hill incline. So as I pull in the weight will transfer from the front axle to the rear which would be dumped to make the tight turn. Will this harm the rear axle to put all the load on it while dumped and completing my turn? I am guessing I'll be fine if I take it slow but would still like to ask.