The Truckers’ Report flatbed Hall of Shame.

They will #### near have a head on collision to get around you. And forget a construction zone with jersey walls. If they got six inches they are going to take it.

 

And now they are starting to put them on the back of van trailers and tankers, that come on with the brake lights!

 

Yes, dumbing down the masses. Have you seen those guys going down the road with a van on and they have Amber lights in their front window? What is that.?

 

Passed this dude in town a couple weeks back. That bar across the bottom of his windshield was flashing amber. I've noticed it on a bunch of dryvans.



You'll see container guys in Illinois with the little $10 barely visible strobe lights because they are running overweight. Illinois requires amber flashing lights for overweight only.

 

Never seen that light bar on a dry van, but nothing surprises me anymore.

 

Thanks to all those who settled my RGN query. I wouldn't be surprised if they call it the same over here, just that I hadn't heard it before. Strange because when I first joined a heavy haulage firm way back in the '70s they sent me out to a site with just such a trailer, but no-one bothered to mention how to operate it. Had to work it out for myself. Didn't seem too complicated and I had it sorted in a few minutes. I bet in these dumbing down times you have to go on a special course to drive one of those.

But you'd have thought someone would at least have said something

BTW I had heard the term lowboys before, we call them low loaders.

 

Just looking at the photos, I expect you raise and lower the goose neck with the sir suspension of the tractor unit, which was not possible for me that day. Which might explain why I seem to remember that there was a donky engine on top to power the lowering and raising.

 

Mechanical neck you use the trucks air to pick the neck up off the front of the deck to drive away.

Hydraulic neck you either have a small gas pony motor on the trailer or a PTO pump on the truck to run the trailer hydraulics.

Mechanical neck is more work to detach since it requires you to unhook the truck from the neck to remove pressure from the links. The tradeoff is lighter empty weight and less moving parts so they are cheaper. You also have to carry timbers to support the neck on the truck frame while detaching.

Hydraulic can drop itself down to remove the links. They have a small jack leg usually to support them selves on the truck frame when detaching.

 

Makes me even more pleased that I stuck to high wide and long with them after that. Heavy loads too, but the sort of things that were craned on and off rather than driven.

 

Hilarious!