Oops....

That will wreck your day

 

wow

 

Somebody call Flo from progressive,she'll have back up and running in no time.

 

That is going to screw up a lot of peoples day, I'm sure there is a construction crew waiting somewhere to place that beam???

 

That could have been deadly

 

I was thinking concrete beams are strong... looks like they are not..

 

When used properly they are plenty strong. Being flopped on its side off the trailer plus the attendant side-loading from the ends remaining on the trailer was not part of the design criteria.

 

The guy with the stopsign didn't seem to panic...almost acted like it was just another day.

 

Clear case of not listening to the escort LOL

The beam can flex only so much before it breaks. They have rebar and sometimes coiled steel skeletons but beams like this are designed with steel cable strands as well. It is not wire rope, more like the steel strands you see as guy lines for telephone poles. What they do is set all t he rebar and steel strands within the concrete beam form, stress the strands to several thousand pounds of pressure and pour the wet concrete in. Leave it set for several days to cure and release the tension on the steel strands and for the rest of that beam's life, the steel strands are trying to retract that psi but are held in place by the cured concrete. This gives the beam some flexibility and tensile strength.

I drove many a concrete piling into the ground for deep foundation work. Some were 12 inches square and others up to 24 inches hexagon shaped pilings. Some were so heavy they could only transport them one per truck and the job might be 800 pilings. Have to be careful unloading them with the crane or super 30 forklift with spreader bar, generally never go over 19 feet between pick points or the piling would bend and break.

I recall one job the pilings were 108 feet long we used two lines on the crane to make the pick, line one attached about 19 feet from the top and on a sliding double barden choker and skookum block about 35 feet down then line 2 of the crane about 19 feet below that and again another 19 feet and pick the thing up flat. Then the crane op would lower line 2 to where the bottom touched the ground then continue lifting on line one keeping tension on line 2 and slowly bring the piling up vertical to loft into the leads so we could hammer it into the ground. Crane op hit the brakes too hard and the piling broke into a W shape. Swing it over to the side because it is garbage now and pick up the next one. Call the casting yard quick to order a new piling because they take about 2 weeks to cure.