Any woodchip haulers here?

The flying W. Drove for them in 87 when they bought out Useless and Reckless. You will like chip'n prolly start out on a night shift which is good for quiet driving time. Most important things are legal weights on your bridges and don't get in a hurry when you unload on the ramps. Seen many a trucks damaged(air lines torn,ect.) A few overloads that you have to dig out to leagalize and that will cure you. Careful on the laddars around the bins they get hydraulic oil on them sometimes or rain. Congrats now go haul some hog fuel..........

 

I ran chips,boiler fuel,mulch and wood fibre from 95 to 99...I worked for a large mill in the oh/wv area..hauled from a mill not whole tree chips...we ran our chips into a papermill at coshocton oh and ran the other products throughout oh,wv,pa & mi....we ran old vaans converted into chip wagons also ran a few old open tops and we had a nice fleet of wilkens and peerless live floors..i enjoyed what we did ,got dirty and sweaty from time to time but i thought it was enjoyable work I stayed there till something great came along..

 

Something you might consider; get yourself a box of painter's dust masks. There's a fair amount of dust involved when loading/unloading. I learned this the hard way hauling hog fuel (old chips, scrap wood,etc.). This particular stuff was wet and rotting from the bottom of the chip piles in a cleanout. I mean this stuff was BAD; white mold all thru it. Stuff was so bad it sometimes spontaneously combusted (we lost 2 trailers which caught fire while going down the road.

Anyhow, I picked up a sinus infection from Hell from breathing in the dust. Had to quit because of it. Was laid up for near a month. Bad scene.

 

Another chip and dust hauler here. We run 7-8 axle chip boxes and potato wagons, Titan walking floors. Myself I haul to the Canadian Soo daily to a GP plant making medium density fibre board.
I like it, seems you get a little more cooperation from 4wheelers when ya have up to 11 axles in the dirt.

What sort of questions do you have? I started this back in June, so there's a lot for me to learn yet, but I do know something.

 

You're following in my footsteps, SNI was my last OTR company as well. The chipboxes you have out there, are they tandems or tridems. We do things a little different here. Most of our tractors are what is called "Michigan Specials". Usually a day cab, set up for heavy haul, 18k fa, 46k rears, full lockers, plus the horsepower and trans to be able to pull practically anything. They are shorter wheelbase as well, at least our daycabs are. We do have a few with the short sleepers on them.
Plus here, if your permitted and have the axles, you can go to 160k gross for the most part. I have to cross two bridges where the max load gross is 144k, so I have to watch it a bit.

I like doing this,especially the part about being home daily. I'm one of the guys that does a bit longer run than the others, 380 miles roundtrip, and have one of the two trucks with apportioned plates. The other 12 trucks are strictly Michigan. Somehow, that really doesn't hurt anyones feelings.

One of the things we get a kick out of, is listening to some guys talking about their max loads and how they have trouble in the small hills we have. I've had one guy tell me I was BSing him about how much I had in the trailer. Crap, it was only 86k load on that one!! And I still pulled his big company truck up hill.