Brick Loads

TARP!ALWAYS!I've witnessed brick go through windshields and that's not a pretty sight.

 

Watch out for those brick loads, some could be a few shy of a load,,

 

I've seen drivers leave a trail of brick and shrug their shoulders wondering what happened.

 

I started off with just straps, firehose protectors and an old 4ft tarp but had fallen bricks try to come out, so i added a rope belt around the bottom to retain them and a steel brick lintel over the top to use less straps and bind the whole load more evenly.



[I wasnt willing to cut one of my 150ft arborist ropes for an experiment so thats why the coil of excess.]


Then i started rolling up a 4" strap and hand ratchet along the rubrail, into the tarp to make a sideboard of sorts, like this. It was much stronger than rope. I couldnt lift the tarp off the deck. Theres one on each side.





But it all took forever compared to the guys with brick screens, theyd be out an hour before me. I was just missing the same day unload cutoff a lot and it was really eating into my pay. Brick was about 50% of my backhauls when things were normal.



So the next move was used pallet racking with the braces knocked off, and having them bent in a pressbrake.



It was better but we still needed edge protection. The wire elbows would pop through a bare strap, and the strap would bend the screen which made them hard to stack. So i tried screens and lintels. Yeah it worked great with bare straps but its a lot of time and tare weight and walking trips to put all away. I could only carry 2 screens at a time without sheering a finger off.



Then i found some plastic corner beads tossed next to a dumpster. I cut them up and zip tied to each screen for a full length edge protector so i could leave the steel lintels at base. They were hard to fish out of the dunnage rack and i was tired of them on the deck.




It worked great a few times but wasnt tough enough long term. If i really bind down the plastic corners would crack or break the zip tie and peel over. And i could still tweak the screen if i tightened em good, especially since unpalletized brick edges rarely line up between packs. This is how i gave them back when i quit.



But looking back i used them all the time for other securements, very versatile. As a open center headboard for my gear mostly. Or to keep steel from sliding out, as a gap filler for tarps, to hold cobbles in, like a huge vee board to spread the strap pressure on some really ugly mulch loads from old castle that wanted to fall over.









Never trust unpalletized brick. This is a packet fresh out of the bander with busted straps already. Never been touched, still sitting on the outfeed conveyor waiting to get put in the yard. And there was another plant with even worse banding.




If i were gonna get back into driving as an O/O i would make screens again for sure, but id either slit EMT conduit and weld flat sections of wire screen to that, or have some steel pressbraked into 2x2 angles with a soft radius corner and weld that to the flat sections. You really want a strong continuous corner that wont deform or be very heavy, but also one thats friendly to a bare strap. Professional brick screens are stainless or aluminum angles with heavy stamped mesh welded to them. Theyre expensive and have sharp corners under the strap.



Definitely make a rack for screens under the deck on each side at your midpoint if you want to do a lot of brick loads. Save you a ton of walking. One where theyre tipped down by gravity and only need a bungee to stay put.

 

I forgot to add that i prefer to try to turn 24 packs of brick into one single unititzed mass for the sake of DOT by over lapping my lintels or screens and strapping right over the lap joint. You can see it in the pic with screens and lintels.

I never saw anyone do this with screens .. Theyd put one screen over two packs with either one or two straps. Totally secure but what does the new trooper with something to prove say about it? I dint want to leave room for being hassled.

I never wanted DOT to say you got 24 packs you need 13 straps plus 26 edge protectors. I was always looking for ways to build it into a solid block that only needed enough for 47k and 30ft or whatever it was.

 

Looks like it would survive off a cliff, one question tho, I'm no flatbedder, but why would you have to tarp a brick load? They're going to get wet someday anyway,,

 

Keeps them contained on the trailer rather than walking off the pallet and falling into the road.. The bricks in the middle of the pallet love to walk outwards from the stack no matter how much ya tighten them down

 

Better yet..... tarping asphalt shingles. You know the stuff that goes on your roof to protect it from weather.
Gotten better in the last couple years but used to be they all wanted them tarped even on the nicest summer days.

 

Meh, I suppose, looks like this guy got every brick covered( pun intended), I never thought a tarp would hold much, but I guess it would pull easier too. Just kind of silly, like tarping rocks,

 

Yup well the bright side to it is there really aint an easier load to tarp than a load of bricks . Nice and square, low to the deck, easy to walk on..