Had my first fall off the flatbed deck tonight.

Another reason my wife is thrilled I'm running full time dry bulk now.

 

I’ve only been doing flatbed for 6 months so far.

Once I was tightening the load with the winch bar and it was angled too far down. Bar slipped out and I rolled forward and hit my back square into the corner of my steel dunnage rack. Good times.

Second issue was tarping a tall load that was peaked like a roof. It was too steep to walk on it and was on a ladder leaned forward to unroll the tarp on the apex of the peak. About 15 feet of the tarp already unrolled but not yet opened up, slid down the steep peak and hit my ladder and almost ended me. This had me search for lighter tarps.

 

Years ago when I first started flatbedding I did almost the same thing.

I had the winch bar too low, angled towards the ground. It slipped out and I head-butted the rub rail, hurt like h#$l, almost knocked my fool self out. First thing I did was look around and see if anyone else saw me.

By the time I went inside to get my BOL it was swollen and turning blue. Lady in the office said, what happened to you? Long story I said, I gotta go, have a good day.

 

About this time last year, I had stopped to check my load. Really cold morning and I was really leaning on my bar when the tip broke off! Boy did I go down in a hurry! Good thing the ground broke my fall...

Probably about 30+ years ago, I had to add a stair stringer to my load of structural steel. It was Friday afternoon and I didn't feel like moving the trailer so I had this probably 15' long stringer balanced on the forklift which I was trying to get on the load from the rear of the trailer (duh) Well I got the thing positioned up on the load and tipped the forks a little so this piece would slide off. Then I climbed on the load and started to pull on this piece to get it sliding (duh) Once it started sliding, there was no stopping it! It slid off the forks, skimmed right across the load, and off the side of the trailer pushing me the whole way down!
Went off the trailer headfirst, trying to break my fall with my arms out, but still pretty much landed on my face in a gravel parking lot! Lucky I didn't break my wrists(and neck) and somehow that piece didn't land on top of me.
But I did manage to fracture my skull OUCH!!

 

Yeah and what about your neck.More people die from broken necks than head injuries, just ask any biker(helmet bounce).I don't know about you but I'd rather have 3 broken arms than a broken neck.

 

Well because I was pretty much diving off the truck, my instinct was arms out. I remember my hands getting pretty well scraped up and I had a bunch of gravel imbedded in my forehead which could've been much worse if I chose to protect my arms...
They put me in a neck brace and were really concerned that I was "broken". There was a lot of attention being given to me until they found out I "only" had a minor skull fracture.
Well they just put a bandage on my forehead without ever cleaning the gravel out cuz I guess they didn't want to put any "pressure" on the fracture.
I ended up with a "tattoo" on my forehead from that gravel. After enduring much harassment about that mark on my forehead being a bruise from the bosses belt buckle...Went to a plastic surgeon for "derm-abrasion" to get that darn tattoo removed!

 

Had a near miss yesterday that caused some serious pucker. Was rolling out my tarps using caution not to step in the spaces between the load, and stuck my foot right through the plastic wrapping on this lumber.

Deceiving because it looked solid until it was too late. Thought I was going all the way over, and it went though my mind how much it was going to hurt. Luckily the long board on the outside was there to stop me. Looked around for witnesses then carried on pretending it didn’t happen. I did decide to get on my hands and knees to finish unrolling the tarps.