Super load in TX accident kills three

Got to their FINAL destination way earlier than they expected.

 

I’m relaying what I heard that came straight from the horses mouth. Maybe I misunderstood a part of it.

But I’ll never say that they’re inexperienced. Because that’s false. These ain’t mega drivers.

 

Thanks for clarifying
But it is at some level inexperience by engineering, management, and the field crew

that company hasn’t had dual lane very long,
I don’t think they’ve done many turntable loads if any at those weights.
thats a known problem with those loads, and theres guys in that circle that know you can’t just throw chains over the top, like it looks like

regardless if the proper securement would have saved it or not, the driver lost the load.. that's pretty much never an option with a load when there’s a push truck , saving a 4 wheeler or not.
maybe in a regular 18 or a car you you could make that decision..

 

What if the front truck was on the brakes and the back truck kept pushing, I can see how that would cause the saddles to fail, especially if the trailer leaned due to an impact of the hydraulic system.

 

No way, the brakes of those trailers will out perform anything the push truck can do. theres 4 sets of brakes per line. I didn’t count them but thats atleast 80 sets.
The push truck couldn’t even upset the trailer enough to cause anything like that.
The push truck driver can feel when the brakes are pressed . If it was hard they would most likely get off the gas immediately. if they didn’t the worst that would happen is the push bar would break.

it’s unlikely a hydraulic failure from what’s been said. I didn’t see any damage like that in the pictures. If it was hydraulic the back trailer would be leaning and on the tires. You wouldn’t fix the back trailer that’s now empty before the pictures when there’s a guy pinned under the vessel. It’s unlikely they could even fix it that fast.

the back trailer probably got whipped enough and he hit the brakes at the wrong time or too much

 

Seems like they had a bolstered load, two trailers, with nothing between them except the load. Is that right? I hate that configuration for exactly this reason. And they had a push truck on the back trailer as well. I can easily see one truck slamming brakes causing the tiedown chains to break. It's tricky because the piece can only be tied to the bolster plate, so you have to chain the bejeezus out of it. Maybe if they had welded the transport saddles to the bolster or tied them down better this could have been prevented. In this case it seems that once the chains on the load broke, the saddle was free to just slide off the bolster plate. You can see the saddle on the ground in one pic. The bolsters cannot tip that much, they have hard stops after a few degrees. Had the saddle been well-secured also it may have just pushed the saddle forward without losing the whole thing.

I'm not saying this to place any blame on the drivers or company. I can't design tie downs to resist being slammed into by a Ford raptor. This is for educational and discussion purposes, should anyone reading be involved in split/bolstered configurations. I always aim to secure the saddle to the bolster, AND put chains from the piece straight to the bolsters. The brakes on both trailers should be tied to the brakes on the front prime mover. And an experienced engineer should be involved in the planning.

 

What is the name of the company that moved this superload of you don't mind revealing??

 

I’m not gonna say ,

it’s not really the company’s fault, the load shouldn't have ended up on the ground in my opinion though

 

Around a million lbs