80/94 Indiana

The problem is they move i hard stop. You 45k moving forward 8 inches plus, it's hard on any securement. If one breaks free.......

It's forbidden at LS

 

I’m originally from Chicagoland so yes. And some of those drivers aren’t from Chicagoland either!

 

Slinky coils are almost as dangerous as regular flat coils, and maybe more so because everyone secures them with straps instead of chains. They'll definitely slide right up into your cab if physics favors that. Obviously running into a slow loaded truck would fit that scenario.

I hauled a lot of slinkies out of Evraz / Rocky Mountain Steel in Pueblo. They're mostly very cheap loads. Later I took some of those loads when System was apparently desperate for some loads, but at least I got paid by the mile on those. I think TMC gets slinky loads somewhere out there in Illinois or Wisconsin, because I remember one time going into a place out there and ended up in line with like ten TMC trucks.

Anyway, after a few of those loads you get pretty fast at securing them. The basic idea is to put coil racks under the front and rear coils, then squeeze the whole load toward the center, pulling back on the front coils and pulling forward on the rear coils, plus one extra strap over the top/front of the front coil and one over the rear coil. You wrap the strap around the middle where two coils are touching. Best practice is to alternate sides for winches, but some trailers only have them on one side.

I can't tell how many coils that poor TMC driver had on the deck, but usually they put at least nine on there, sometimes as many as eleven. I count ten straps, which would be enough for eight coils. There might be a strap you can't see in the picture, so maybe nine coils. The two boards for the front coil are near the front of the trailer, and what looks like coil racks are just in front of the drives.

I only see one coil on the deck, so maybe eight of them came off the front. That's a lot of steel, probably close to 40,000 pounds. I hope that driver made it.

As far as parking on the shoulder, don't do it unless you've got a medical or a mechanical emergency. Stopping on the shoulder for any other reason is a rookie move, and you're an idiot if you do it, at least in my book. There's always a better place to stop if it's not an emergency. ALWAYS.

 

Um, the one trying to get off the shoulder is obligated to yield, not the other way around.

 

Ive never hauled slinky coils so i want to ask... is this something that a shipper/reciever is requiring to put straps on? I see every truck hauling these things have straps , thats why ive always wondered about them.. Straps wear out so easily on metal freight.. Chains may have helped keep these on the deck . Pure speculation of course.... Any update on the driver ?

 

There are two basic kinds of slinky coils, at least that I have come across: smooth and rebar. The smooth rod doesn't seem to wear out straps as much as the rebar rod, but really I don't remember pulling straps off a load of slinkies and thinking that they cut up my straps. (Not like some aluminum loads I've hauled, anyway.)

I don't remember the shipper saying anything about it. It was just the way I was shown to do it, and it's the way everyone secures them at those shippers. I don't remember ever seeing anyone put chains on them, either. Honestly, it would be a big PITA to chain them.

I'm guessing that chains could bend the rod, so maybe that's why no one uses them, but I don't know that for sure. My understanding is that these coils go into big spools that feed the rod into whatever machines and processes they use to make it into final products. A kink in the line would presumably cause problems. But this entire paragraph is pure speculation, so really it's worthless.

No updates on the driver at the original article. There is another picture that is interesting, though. Seems like the coils maybe didn't actually go through the cab, so hopefully the driver made it. Also, this picture seems to make it more likely that the Westside Transport truck is the one the flatbedder hit. From the first picture (above), I couldn't tell if that truck was just sent there to recover freight or what.