end dump blow out while strait up in the air SCARY!!!!!

I was at the terminal and backed in the row of other trucks hooked up to trailers. Saw my buddy, so walked over to his truck to chat. We were standing beside his left steer tire talking, then one of his left drive tires exploded. Wow, can't describe it.

 

I was heading to texas and going through the truck route in Selma Alabama and watched my left front steer tire blow and shoot off across the divided highway there. quite the ride..

 

Are you raising your bed too fast and the load is hanging up? I've been around them a lot and not once seen front tires come off the ground, or is these farm wagons you see out west or a bed on the frame?

The end dumps here are impossible to raise the front tires. You just lay them over.

 

He is talking about the front trailer axle not the truck. That is normal when unloading. At least I hope this is what he's describing. Blowout on one of the 4 left on ground would get more then your attention.

 

Yep frameless end dumps the front axle always comes off the ground...

I had a load of contaminated soil that was mostly clay, went to dump it off and the entire load stuck in the trailer. Was quite the scare trying to get it back down. We ended up having to wash it out with fire hoses.

 

I drove some old ones yrs ago. Cable models instead of hydraulic. Used to get cushion sand that would hang. Not like clay but enough to scare you. And then of course the wind would start gusting from zero to 30mph from no where. lol They taught us to always make sure you were on level ground and be ready to lower it right now if you thought is was going over. Never had that honor.

 

Most of the job sites I hit with the open top, we simply use an excavator, which is convenient.

Running a PB dump in January, I lifted the box in a land fill, on somewhat uneven ground (had no choice, the foreman needed me to dump exactly there.) Slowly lifted the box, inched forward as slowly as was humanly possible to do so, massaging the clutch really gently, put the box up a little more to get the last bit of the load out, hear the ram start to smack on its own casing, immediatly let off the clutch and get the vehicle to stop gently, heard a bang, crunch and snap. Ram came apart right in the middle, broken end off the box shot right through part of the cab, destroying the PTO control box 2 feet away from me.

Popped the brakes, threw my hard hat on, and sprinted out of the cab. This #### foreman was laughing his ### off, that wasn't super funny for me, considering had that ram shot through the cab, two feet to the left, it would've hit me.

Turns out the ram had been improperly repaired months earlier. A seal was applied backwards, and the 3'rd stage cap wasn't fully tightened since the seal wasn't set properly. Dumb #### mechanic just left it like that. Every time we put the box up, it was getting just a bit more and more loose.

 

The brain doesn't function good at 3am and him being from the west I was trying to comprehend what he was saying with the wild equipment they have out there. I was thinking how in the world was the steers coming off the ground, lol.

 

Oh, dump trucking ain't for the faint of heart. I've had some scary rides in dump trucks over the years. My 1st TT job, I pulled a 28 ft. City frame type dump, and that was pretty stable, had it "wiggling" many times, and it never went over. Matter of fact, the boss said sometimes, you are better off continuing to raise it, as he's seen trailers go over coming down when you "bail out" of the dump. It's a tough call sometimes.
I drove a tandem dump that the end gate would hang up and not open, and on spread jobs, the material would shift to the back, the gate wouldn't open, and I'd pull a "wheelie". YEEHAW!!!