My Experience with Lone Star Transportation

That ain't no joke! They once deadheaded me from Little America, WY to Duluth, MN for a load of mulch to Dallas. The alternative was to leave me sitting in WY over a long holiday weekend when a winter storm was rolling in.

Stupid part about that was when a week later, they wouldn't deadhead me 500 miles home for the home time that had been scheduled since before I signed on with them 3 months prior. So, I quit...returned their truck to Gainesville where Enterprise picked me up at the terminal....and I went home.

I enjoyed my time with them...but certain things are non-negotiable. When I say I need to be home, that means I'm going to be home.

 

AT, after reading this thread and looking at the pictures of the steel beams you loaded, i thought i would give you a tip. you had a spread axle trailer, you can put 40,000 on the rear. from the picture you have loaded them further to the rear by about two feet and you would have been 250 over on your drives.

on a load like that load like that , find center of trl ( i have mine marked, but i own it) then center the load 2 to 3 feet behind that center and you should be fine.

example i loaded 48,000 the other day i grossed 79,500 with half a tank fuel, weighed out at 11,600 on steer, 29,350 on drives , and 38 , 750 on trl, 24 4 feet square crates , loaded 1 foot of rear with 3 foot left on front.

remember a spread is your friend, just put the load further back on trl, and good job on the coated pipe.

 

The trailer was pre-loaded

 

no, AZS. not the steel i-beams he hauled out of south carolina. he live loaded those. it was the coated pipe that was pre-loaded.

when ya live load a spread put the load where ya know it will scale, with a spread and under 80,000 you should not be heavy on the drives, load the rear heavy.

just trying to give a tip, read post #437 by AT

 

Sorry, thought you meant the pipe. Reading comprehension failed me.

 

I disagree with skateboardman regarding loading the spread heavy. We have seen the cost of tires go up siginificantly over the last 6 months. Loading the spread heavy will peel the rubber off the front axle. Balance the load when possible, and save some rubber.

 

its somewhat the nature of a spread cpape, to try and always balance the weight like you would a closed tandem defeats the purpose of a spread.

now you dont want to always load and end up as heavy as i did , but in coming out of california you dang sure dont want any weight problems.

and in cases where no scales are around and where once you load you cant move it you dang well better load heavy to the rear to not take any chances.

you simply try to avoid any real tight turns with a spread and have a dump valve hooked up, its not real hard to lessen the tire wear on a spread, you got to know what you are doing.

you can also rig up the front axle so you can lift it when hauling loads less than 20,000 pounds ( 60 bucks in parts will do it) and that will get you about 1 mpg also .

and the rear heavy load didnt pull a bit different on my 48 spread , but how many weight tickets and scale problems would it take to make up for the extra wear on tires.

cpape , do you guys have dump valves on your trailers?? you are posting from a standpoint of owning trailers and buying tires and i am posting from a viewpoint of helping a new driver til he gets a better feel of loading a trailer. i buy my trl tires also but i load my trl to make sure i am legal. that load the other day was the first load i have scaled out in nearly 2 years and then only cause the agent requested it, i knew i was right and shot the heck out of 9.50

and besides for a new flatbedder like AT it would be much easier to get a load on until he gets a much better feel for how to position flatbed loads.

and AT you will learn just cause a guy loads a truck aint no guarantee he knows how to load that spread so you wont be overaxle.

by the way when you were 34250 0n your drives you were like say about 31,000 on your trailer , if that much , and 11,200 or so on the front?

lol

 

trying to balance the weight does not defeat the purpose of a spread. There are times you must load the spread heavy. I am not sure why a load of beams would be loaded heavy on either end on a 48' flat. Just put the center of the load over the center of the trailer.