The Jamie Davis Towing Discussion Thread

You can add a thousand lanes and people will grind it to a halt.

I personally watched the NJ Pike grow from 4, 6, 9, 12, 24 etc lanes over the decades and it still did not matter.

Glad to hear they twinned that road up there. But those poor canadians think they are fast, they should come down here back in my time and try it. 130+ mph is a dispatcher's wet dream, instant delivery overnight anywhere east coast or east of Mississippi for that matter actually far as Texas-Kansas.

 

I have Netflix and didn't even know the show was on there. Thanks.

 

I saw this thread but hadn't heard of the show. Started watching last night. Beyond the antics of the people in it I don't know squat about towing. But, it was pretty sobering seeing two fatalities and watching the guy get hit by the car and trapped under his tow truck. Whether or not those guys are goofballs they deserve some respect for being out there.

Management in the company I work for is pretty much a twin to Jamie and his guys so that seems pretty normal to me. F'd up but they get the job done. LOL.

 

Jamie's rotator alone was a $700,000 USD machine. Spoiler, he sold it earlier this year to an towing company in the US, no more rotator. One of the reasons I got out of towing, too much rate regulatuon and equipment prices through the roof. A new light duty is north of $90,000 today, basic 25 ton wrecker is about $250k.

 

In the towing industry it is standard practice to have a 4 to 1 safety factor to help prevent catastrophic failure, assuming the tower stays close to the ratings of their equipment. Standard on most 50 ton heavy wreckers is 6x37 IWS wire rope with an ultimare load of 58,000 pounds and a nominal working load limit of around 15,000 pounds as a straight, single line. We accomplish much more out of our wire rope by using snatch blocks, which are pullies designed to either change direction (no mechanical advantage) or double line capacity (with mechanical advantage by sharing some of the liad with a deadman).

With how heavy steel wire rope is we would need a team of men just to lay out the rope if we used the same standards as the crane industry. Personally I think now that we have crane like equipment in the towing industry (rotators) we really should be adopting more of the crane industry standard practices.

 

It is real sobering when you think about this fact, on average in the US one tow truck operator is struck by a motorist and killed every 6 days! This fatality rate is nearly double that if other highway responders, as no one pays any attention to amber lights. Please, slow down and move over for anyone on the shoulder.

 

I can see that, in the roll off application the cable is threaded through a few b&t's, and is a straight pull vs a drum.

 

That makes a lot of difference, with a drum once we have more than one layer of wire rope across the drum surface our mechanical advantage goes down measurably. A winch is rated, and strongest, with the first layer of cable. So for example, Jamie's 50 ton has a lifting capacity of 50 ton assuming the winches only have one layer of rope each, and the boom angle and elevation is just right. When you change angle that the rope comes off the boom sheave it adds or reduces stress on the boom head, real easy to overload your equipment.

 

Meh, we don't bother with any of that light-weight, consumer-grade crap...



This one cost me $700

Of course I was a wee bit heavy...

 

Must have a Cummins. Threw the chains right off the tires lol.