The Jamie Davis Towing Discussion Thread

The proper way would be with chains or soft straps in place of the winch line. Even with chains or straps you have to be careful to not jerk the rigging as this can exert up to 10x the usual load on the strap/cable/chain and momentarily exceed the working load limit. You may not see immediate failure, kind of like bending a paperclip back and forth over and over, eventually and usually when least expected the rigging will fail.

 

It's not on here in the states at least in my area. The only way I can watch it is on Netflix. I watched the first and second season this past winter, I've been waiting on the third season on Netflix.

 

The problem with using the winch line for this is it is designed for an even amount of force to be applied gradually. Winch line, wire rope is the proper term, is a machine with moving parts that get crushed easily. What I mean is the wire rope is actually several layers of steel wrapped around a fiber or metal core that is impregnated with lubricant. Each of these strands are weak by themselves but as a group they become very strong, as long as they stay lubricated and do not get crushed. By shock loading a wire rope you risk breaking a few strands each time, eventually you will snap the entire wire rope. Most likely that will happen to them when they are doing a critical lift such as picking a truck up over a guide rail or setting it down on a trailer to haul away.

Also by jerking the truck it will shock the mounting bolts on the winch, wrecker body, and subframe, all which are critical to the truck staying together. You will never see a crane operator shock load their equipment like that, and if they do the equipment is immediately put out of service until it is inspected by a qualified person. Usually in the crane world shock loaded equipment is just discarded.

In the towing industry you may not see this happen, but we are subject to many of the same regulations as the crane industry even though OSHA does not regulate work on/near rolling stock and most towing operations are exempt from OSHA while doing emergency work. A good towing company will never break a chain or cable as you see repeatedly on this show.

 

The Weather Channel runs marathons of the show regularly, just had several hours on this past weekend.

 

I'll have to check that out! Didn't know that, thanks.

 

I watch it on the weather channel believe it or not..

 

funny the weather channel here in Canada shows the weather lol. Not shows based on the weather

 

Theres only so much "its cold here, and hot there... to many hours to fill....

 

What surprises me is how thin some of the gear seems, i did roll off for a long time, and we had thick ### cables 5/8 i think, wll at 60,000 i think? With 2 lift pistons rated at 30,000 each. Supposedly the kit n kabodle was designed to go at 30 tons... these guys are pulling a hell of a lot more...

Edit, now that i think of it, iirc it was closer to a 1 inch line...