Sliding Axle Jumped The Rail/Pins

If only.

 

this happened to me a couple months ago, picked up a cross dock relay headed for CAT equipment facility, trailer passed pre and post trips along the way but by the time i arrived at CAT receiver the trailer was tipping towards the curb side and they refused to accept the load on the basis i could not move tandems

had to turn around on their property and as i watched my tandems during the turn the rear wheels came off the ground! clearly the heavy load had shifted and it was likely a big piece of unbalanced equipment or just poorly loaded and not tied down, that would have been a big tragedy for my equipment, the trailer, the load and the customer's property and nothing good would have happened to me, thanks CAT

needless to say i slowed the #### down and got her to the entrance road just outside of the gate where they let me park to sort it out, and parked the offending side up on the berm so the trailer was more or less balanced

the company sent a local third party repair truck out and the young man was not impressed, he has seen this happen a lot and he knew exactly what to do: he removed the rectangular retainer piece--that important component that keeps the sliding rail secured to the stationary carriage member-- and had me release the pins, the rail settled down into its normal position and then he re-attached the retainer, took him only a few minutes, my parking job really helped here (ahem...rookie high five)

this is yet another item that i was never told about in school nor in training nor by any mentor or million miler, never saw it in any manuals or safety info, just goes to show that experience and common sense are the best ways to learn this job and yet another "hats off" to the old schools, inspecting that retainer is now part of my pre and post

 

I'm glad it worked out for you, but I have one question; how did the pins get out of the holes and jump the rail?

 

It doesn't matter how many years experience you have, you can still learn something new, just about every day.

 

Yes sir. Most defenitely.

 

I don't think it could do that unless both pins on one side were not fully engaged (extended) or were barely engaged. The "safety catch" seems to be largely ineffective if the pins aren't where they're supposed to be (fully extended).

And let's not forget ... 'aint nothing but gravity working to keep the trailer and bogie together if the driver failed to "re-latch" the system, and insure it was successfully completed.

 

i thought it was my fault

i checked the status of the trailer a couple weeks later and it had been taken out of service. the repair tech and company and a couple drivers who stopped to help me think it could have been due to a combination of poorly loaded cargo that was excessively heavy and unbalanced in an older trailer that could not handle the weight shifts or someone released the pins while i was at the last truck stop just before i delivered which i failed to notice and .the load bouncing around pulled the rail off the pins during a left turn or leftward ramp where the weight would shift anyway

i tried to take responsibility but they said there was nothing i could have done or failed to do, STexan makes me think i should also check the pins are actually fully engaged and not only flush with the rail, i have never seen this on a trailer but will check that for sure now. if it was sabotage the company said there is only so much a driver can do, if it was someone tampering then it happened while i was inside and i failed to inspect the equipment right before shoving off which i deeis another thing i am doing now, i catch drivers lingering around the equipment all the time but it's mostly them peeing on the splash guards for some reason

i know the pins were engaged when i picked up the relay at the yard, when at the scale and during all my pre and posts, i did pay a lot of attention to the pins because it was a heavy load making my suspension load gauge quiver between 50-65 and i had to travel across a couple states and i remember looking at the pins and counting holes and doing the math but she scaled out ok

 

Sometimes, @DoneYourWay, crap just happens. Everybody is human, and humans make mistakes. Even though there will likely be somebody on here that will take offense at that statement. Not saying you did make a mistake here, just saying that it happens.

 

I can remember a trailer where both pins on one side would only come out to about flush with the outside (at the standard 40 foot position). I jiggled the trailer back and forth holding the trailer brake. Beat the area with a BFH, still no change. Could not really get in behind to do much from the back side without special contortion abilities. But I had to roll to beat traffic. Left with it. 50 miles of SoCal freeway abuse did the trick. They worked there way back to where they should be when I stopped at the I-10 rest area east of Riverside.