Hard Break...Driver death

If your licensed from New York, you have to have an endorsement for coils, it is actually a test on all types of securement, it's the only state I know of that does it, Alabama is only for coils and is simple. New York's test is pretty tough if your just starting out

 

Yeh this looks like one of those loads they don't want your chains on. I might throw a few chains on because I carry plenty of carpet scraps to pad it. These structural loads take forever to analyze and strap sometimes. I only haul them at a good rate.

And I've seen a typical aluminum headache rack save a sleeper from some I-beams. Granted the guy was in a 45 zone and braked hard because he was just about to miss his turn but the light gauge sleeper skin would have sliced open like a wet paper bag I think.
Then the guy lied to me and said some guy cut him off but I was sitting eating donuts right across the street and saw it all! Don't know why he lied to me. I just wondered if I could help him out somehow.

And I rarely do what y'all bubbas call a "belly wrap". I will cinch a bundle with one or two chains to make the bundle behave as one big piece. The cinch chains just wrap around and don't get attached to the trailer. I can tighten up a loose load real good this way. I don't rush or worry about having to use extra chains. Impatience and laziness will come back to bite ya hard in the backside.

On this load I would have threw some cross chains over the front top layer in an X pattern with some padding and maybe a cinch chain. Hard to armchair QB from the pics. I let my sense of self-preservation be my guide.

 

Belly wrap is more for side to side movement.

Blocker chains in front of the load is the safest method. I use blocker chains on any steel load I haul,.. everything from plates, beams to pipe. And even then,.. depending on the type of impact or force of the stop,.. its not 100% guaranteed the load will not rip through my chains or the anchor points I secured the chain to.

Why people dont think about their own safety when securing a load always bothers me. Yet I see steel loads with nothing but straps or minimal chains all the time.

Hurst

 

Not always. I hauled bridge-abutments pre-loaded on a shoddy trailer, secured by UPC locally, and had many shift, shimmy and shake; even though I RE-secured what they had with my 4" straps *(many)* and my chains, where feasible. Common sense would've been me refusing that load on a Sunday (because it was rejected by a normal F/B guy (*or 3*) on Friday or Saturday. I almost lost it into CLE. The option of having it re-arranged was slim to none. Ok .. none. It seemed like it was held on to the tri-pod by coat hangers. It slid and hopped 2 miles away from destination; we did all we could to get there. It's not common-sense, it's a)loading b)lifestyle c)take what you get?!? < not me, any more~>
I'll stick to tanks. . . . and I respect the HECK~!! out of you guys. There's a lot more physics involved that takes more than five minutes or even 30, to figure out.
I have nothing but UTMOST respect for y'all, seriously. 30 years on wheels, and NO THANK you... Y'all are a special breed; I'll give you that.

 

Again, if your common sense told you not to pull it , and you did anyway, that's lack of common sense. To many times. Common sense is overruled by. Being in a hurry, saying I have hauled this and it has never moved before, common sense I doing it right and then adding more securement. I have pulled tank also, with co2, liquid helium, hydrogen and oxygen. Same thing, use your head for something besides a hat rack.

 

@Skate-Board
Sorry but a headboard would have stopped that load easy.
Start loading close to the headboard,so there isn't a gap.
The load cannot build momentum if it starts shifting so it doesn't have the power to go thru the headboard.

 

Nope. Transportation Board did a test years ago. 15mph head on with steel beams. Went through headboard and through cab. That's why they don't require them anymore.

 

Sorry,i saw the evidence first hand.
A steel headboard,full load off I-beams and full brake.
Ripped the headboard from the trailer chassis.(the whole front off the trailer needed to be rebuild)
BUT load stopped against the back off the cab(just small dents,they didn't even repair it,ran it as is)
And before you ask,no i wasn't the driver.

I do agree that a light headboard has little or no function.