Semi rollover spills 43,000 pounds of milk containers onto road.

Walmart gets a lot of blue pallets too. Those are CHEP pallets. CHEP is an interesting story in itself, started out in Australia after WWII when the Americans left a bunch of military equipment and supplies behind rather than taking it back to the U.S. Now they're the biggest pallet company in the world.

 

What's worse, bulk milk like I'm hauling... Or jugs stacked up in a 13'6" reefer? From a standpoint of rollovers. The smooth bore has the surge issue. Our farm pickup trailers are two compartment which helps with surge. Let's say I'm going to load my first farm and it's 40k lbs of milk. I will load the front to capacity 36k and the remaining 4k goes in the back. This does 3 things.... Reduces surge to almost nothing, keeps weight on drive tires going up hill, and loading my last farm.... Avoids spilling as long as I'm under the 70k capacity of the trailer. Total gross will be 104-105k.

I have on occasion loaded that 40k on a single compartment trailer and it makes for a pretty rough ride on hills.

 

Well here’s something to think about- when’s the last time you saw a tanker 53’ long,13’6” tall and 102 inches wide?
Dry vans and reefers can carry more in cubic centimeters and pounds than what some bore tankers haul in pounds and gallons. Plus tankers drivers are prepared to deal with surge from liquids in bulk-something dry van and reefer drivers sometimes don’t anticipate,especially if the product is double stacked in the trailer. I’ve had loads up to 46,000 pounds of bottled water where on certain ramps I dropped the speed down to 5 mph just on principle.

 

Ive hauled totes of liquid in dry vans before. Strangest feeling ever when you stop at a light at you’re wiggling around like a tanker and all I normally haul is 2/3rds full smooth bore tankers.

 

That’s just it,you’ve had the experience of hauling smooth bore and dry van. A new driver behind the wheel or a driver who has transitioned from tanker hauling to dry van/reefer can be caught off guard by it.

 

Another thing to consider is the equipment that was involved in the accident(specifically the tractor). The tractor was a midroof Peterbilt,a lot of drivers prefer those tractors because of the low center of gravity-which may have played a role in the accident here because it gave the driver a false sense of security or overconfidence. That lower center of gravity may have given the driver the impression that he could take the ramp at a higher speed,but the laws of physics showed otherwise.

 

Last dry van load I did. 48,000 pounds, 4360 gallons, of product in 15 350 gallon totes. Think it cam out to something like 53,000 pounds in the box but it was split like 6-7 totes in the nose and the rest at the back door. Had to back down a 5-6% grade road about 600’ to where the paper mill was to back into the dock as it was on a hill side right by the Willamette River in West Linn Oregon. The tow truck was there to pick up their hostler tractor.

 

You had a triaxle trailer to spread the weight. Most of us deal with the standard issue dual axle tandems.

 

Two days into the year. Not going to be a good year for that driver.

 

Yup but Ive also had that setup axled out at 100,000 after it was reworked as when I first picked up the load I was a little over 106,000 with 50,000 on the trailer axles. Pulled 6 totes off that had product in them but 6 empties back on. Lol