Heavy Haul Miscellaneous Thoughts, Ideas and Questions

I'm not up to date on my tire pricing but I would be willing to bet it was whatever profit and then some. Plus, new permits because the other ones probably expired. It's a probably a good thing the NYS Police CMV Enforcement unit is armed. There was most likely a price on that cop's head after the inspection.

 

Connecticut was doing the same thing to anybody in a Budget rental truck. I probably towed 2 dozen out of the Greenwich scale. It was only the little Isuzus and Mitsubishis. All under rated for the steer axle. Some on the drive axles if they were pushing the gvw.

 

Had someone PM a question for me to post for the brethren.

 

With a heavier built trailer!!!
Now on a more serious note..... It is a Good question...
Depending on how the trailer is setup I can think of a couple ways of dealing with it,,,,
But to deal with it before it's a problem one would need to "read" the road far enough in front of themselves to anticipate the problem, stop, make adjustments to the trailer suspension, pull ahead, adjust, pull ahead, adjust, etc till they are past the transition!!
Sounds great at the lunch counter, but in the moment, I'm not sure how many would actually get it stopped soon enough? And how many under a quick assessment would stay on the power, because of the next hill and trying to maintain momentum, while cringing and saying, this might be a little hard on the trailer!

Either way the weight shift can be compounded, depending on the ride hight valves and how the suspension is setup. As the nose of the trailer goes up weight is transferred to the rear most axles, and as the front axles start to "hang" the ride hight valve will start to dump air, thinking the axle has to much, thus transferring more weight. Meanwhile at the rear axle that is now being stuffed into the wheel wells is probably bottomed out, or close to it and that suspension is trying to put more air into itself, thinking it's riding to low!!

 

I'll agree with the heavier built trailer comment as that trailer was never designed for those stresses. The simplest way to prevent that is to drop the air out of the booster and pull the shims therefore putting all the weight on the trailer which it will handle. I suppose that reading a road myself comes from pulling multi axle trailers for miles and miles off-road in crap conditions.

 

Thanks guys. The way I tried to explain it was along haulhand's line of thought of too sharp of an incline, plus the turn equaled too much weight on the booster. Solution: get the weight off the booster.

Way to break it down into cornbread language, Petey...much appreciated.

If anyone else has a question and wish to remain anonymous, pm me. But I would encourage everyone to go ahead and post any questions in the open. Excellent group of guys on the HH forum.

Thanks again Haulhand and Petey.

 

Tire weight ratings are the weight at rated speed. I know personally from off road operations that you can almost double the tire weight rating as long as you go slow enough.

I've seen Goldhofers weighted to 75,000lb per axle line. That's 75k on 8- 17.5 tires. I've never seen a 17.5 rated for over 5,000lb and here we had over 9,000lb per tire without issue.

IMO DOT officers should take that into consideration when dealing with super loads. It's not like they are going down the road at the speed limit.

 

Good point. Max speed in NY was 15 or 20 mph I think. And full stops for bridges and over passes. Seems very improbable you would lose control at such a low speed. But then again, the law is the law and must be enforced. Even if it's doesn't make sense

 

What do you guys do for fuel, once you're loaded wide? Drop and bobtail to the fuel lane at the end of the day?

What do you do if you're on a permitted road, and there is a construction zone where you are down to one lane? Run it slow? Get out and walk?

 

Permitted road doesn't mean an unrestricted route. Good planners will check with local agencies and do pretrip surveys. California publishes restrictions weekly for narrow lanes or construction zones. As for fuel, I don't know. I've never been that wide. I have seen escorts with fuel tanks in their trucks. It all seems to fall back on really extensive, almost exhaustive planning. And no matter how well you plan, no matter what goes wrong, it's always the driver's fault. Like that poor guy in Maryland or Virginia, he gets hung up on the train tracks and neither one of his POLICE escorts called the railroad to stop the train. They didn't call the railroad because it wasn't THEIR job. Truck, trailer and load destroyed, train derailed, people injured and the it was all blamed on the driver. The police are there to protect and to serve the public, unless they are escorting super loads. Then their only job is to escort the load, the motoring public be ######. I am sorry for ranting.