One of those days,.....

Mondays eh?

Started out like any other day. Delivered my weekend load. Carrier scored me a cash deal (Under the table,.. cough,. undocumented,.. cough) to take a Cat 963 loader 93 mi from Chicagoland over into Mi for $900. Whats not to love?

Thats where it all went south.

The machine belonged to one of my carriers Polish friends who spoke little to no English. 2 months in the states. Took his life savings, came to the states to start small construction company.

So anyway,.. 963 is roughly a 41k - 42k lb machine. Nothing my truck and trailer cant handle. I've easily already done 100 machines this size. Most of them loaded and unloaded by me. Something about my ramps makes even experienced operators freeze up and panic,.. and thats just what happened. He made it up to the top and started teetering on the edge of my trailer. I'm trying to get him to continue forward,.. get him and the weight of that machine off the rear edge of my deck. Those tracks need to hurry up and get flat on my deck. He's teetering,.. inching left and right,.. I'm watching my deck contort,.. the rear plate is flexing and bowing out and he wiggles the machine,.. then it happened.









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The ramps and stands held up pretty well considering the punishment they were subjected to.

End result,.. 2 bent ramps, one stand with broken pin eyelet, rear deck plate destroyed. Its all getting rebuilt and will have triple reinforcement beams on the inside and the ramp pads will also be mounted and reinforced differently this time.

Trailer is in the shop. Carriers insurance is going to handle this.

Meanwhile I am now pulling my carriers 48' Wilson all aluminum tri axle step deck. Wilson Premier trailer. I'll get pics posted tomorrow.

I gotta say,.. I'm not a big fan of Wilson trailers,.. but this one is warming up to me. I've been in the market for an all aluminum trailer and this one has a lot of features that I like. The deck surface is almost identical to how my Fontaine is set up. 2 rows of wood. It has the chain pull outs, J-plates and I barely feel it back there. Couple of things I would do differently. This one has the 17.5 wheels. I'd opt for a 53' with 22.5 wheels, sliding rear axle and just a spread,.. no tri axle set up. And this trailer on has 1 box.. definitely need 2 boxes.

I pick up my first load with it tomorrow. Going to try to get some heavy machines on it to see how it handles the weight. I'll be sure to post a full report.

Meh,.. could of been worse,.. I could of been anywhere else in the country, stuck in a hotel until my trailer was repaired. Fortunately I was in my carriers home turf. Everything was handled professionally.

Hurst

 

Cant have that much weight teetering and wiggling on the edge of the trailer. The machine needs to make a clean continuous progression from the ramps to the deck. I've had other guys panic before,.. unsure how to land on the deck. Even had a few back down off the ramps and call uncle,.. then allow me to load the machine. Personally I have more respect for the guys who flat out refuse to go up the ramps from the get go instead of freezing at the top of my ramps.

Hurst

 

Is what it is. Things break and considering what I do and how I do it. I'm surprised this never happened sooner.

At least now it will be repaired and fixed the way I always wanted it to be and I dont have to pay for it.

Hurst

 

They will hold 50,000 lbs (Not each piece) combined. More than I can legally scale.

When the machine came crashing down,.. I'm pretty sure the ramps and stands took more weight then they were rated for.Yet they remained pretty much intact.



This Komatsu D61 is similar in weight,.. roughly 41k lbs. Not so much as a wimper when operated and loaded correctly.

Besides,.. it wasnt the ramps that failed,.. it was my deck.













Hurst