It was Saturday.. I was working the weekend for the boys... all cash and I get to drive one of the Mack tri-axles. I run a loader during the week so it is a nice change to get in a truck. The job we were on required backing down a 1/2 mile driveway through the woods. Not really a problem as I had done this several times this fall. Now with the tri-axle I need to pick up the third axle before backing in as it was a sharp turn off the road and many turns in the driveway. I reached down to lift the axle which I had done for the past 8 weekends... and opened the ^#@_)(*& tailgate !! I had a load of crushed 1 1/2 stone and we cleaned up the 1/2 yard or so of stone with the skidsteer.... Why isn't one knob square and one round?
:lmao :thumbsup O boy, never done that, thank **** BUT I will admit to tipping a load of stone toooo close to the heap in my younger days and twisting the tail gate. Not bad, well I didnt think it was that bad,...... until I pulled out of the pit with a load of 10mm shingle, well 3/4 load by the time I realised it was going all over the carriageway. Every day after that for a week I had to go in the shop and buy a broadsheet newspaper. Not for my education, it was so I could place pages around the tailgate whilst carrying 10mm :Banghead
our airgate switch is on the dash...lift axle is on the center with the hoist for the bed...or else i would have done the same thing i am sure
When backing the pig trailer on site to unload, I have been known to trip the truck tailgate first, that can create a few problems. Grain is the worst, we used to cart grain with extensions on our normal sides and I had a tailgate let go on the highway. Because the grain is stacked higher, it seems to place more pressure on the tailgate when travelling. Fourtunately the tailgate was chained, so it just spread the grain for about a kilometre. Another time we received a call from the local council suggesting that we might have spread some rocks along the main road. Fortunately someone threw them off, the tailgate on our rock body had released. Rn'R.
Surprisingly I haven't done that but I have cleaned up 28 tons of gravel from a belly dump that dumped on the highway doing the same thing.
I've forgotten to lock the tailgate many times before loading Woops did I say that out loud:Banghead Luckily always caught it before leaving loader. (then jump out and blame @#$% damn junk truck. Piece of @!%$# crap tailgate popped)
Man I've done that a ton of times myself:Banghead
Thats funny! Im sure I will have a story or two to share about that sometime in the future!
Never did that but are driver was off one day and I was driving our mack granite triaxle as I was going down the road I reached over to grab my hat and put it on and the back of the hat caught the tail gate knob. I dont think I could have tail gated that couple tons of 57's any better then I did.
X2 I have done that a couple of times myself......... On the other side of the coin, while loading with a track loader you don't notice the tailgate is unlocked until you have dumped a couple of buckets in the truck and next thing you see is what you just loaded, is back on the ground again.:Banghead Dump load, clean-up, repeat.
A highly skilled professional driver NEVER EVER forgets the tailgate. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!! Guess I ain't as highly skilled and professional as I like to think I am.
IGuess that if we were professional then the Job tittle would be REAL ESTATE RELOCATERS and not dump truck drivers :drinkup When i fist got our truck it took a while to get use to locking the tailgate but luckly I always remembered to unlock it I hear that is a trip that you will not long forget about . .
I was working in a quarry putting a culvert in one of our roads, and 3 other guys where stripping overburden, I looked over to where the bosses nephew was dumping the spoils and the old mack that they where using had the front tires about 6 feet in the air. The hero in the truck had forgotten to trip the gate, let me tell ya, he NEVER did that again.
LOL!!! One time I had a load of stone on an old Autocar 10 wheeler and forgot to trip the gate. I was looking at the tail in the mirror and didn't see any material coming out and noticed the lever hadn't been tripped. The truck went up so gradually and looking in the mirror I didn't notice what was happening, when I opened the door to trip the gate I about pooped my pants. The truck was standing on the tailgate pretty much, I was quite a ways in the air. I jumped down and climbed the vertical ribs on the dump body like a ladder and tripped the gate, it opened just enough to allow the stone to trickle out. The truck gently came back to earth and I was on my way, no one but me (and now all of you) knew what had happened! I haven't repeated that stunt!
I can honestly say that I have never left a gate open on the road, but there was a couple of times when hauling product to the storage piles at the top of the quarry that it was forgotten. But we never made it away from the loading pile in that case because we would load the trucks just about to the point of overflowing the sideboards and the loader operator would spot the stone coming out of the gate. We had one driver who everytime he came back to the quarry to get loaded we checked the lever on the gate because he was notorious for not locking it especially after he had dumped about 2 yards on the ends of the access road for the local home depot and walmart.
I have forgotten the tailgate latch many times over the years but that covers a lot of years too. I cannot remember the last time I forgot it however as I have created good habits which comes from many years of exposure and forgetting to latch it of course. My routine is to dump my load and unless there is a reason to physically check the tailgate I leave the dogs open theorizing that if there were a stone or obstruction that would inhibit the gate from latching properly it might very well vibrate or bounce out of there on the way back to the pit or quarry. If you have mechanical linkage you will know it right away so I close it at the dump site but the air gates give no indication whether they are fully closed or not without actually looking at the dogs unless you can see the linkage in the mirror. I have made it a habit in any case of checking the tailgate latch as the loader is approaching the truck. As you know once you attempt to dump with the gate closed with the air system and the load shifts against the gate you will likely need assistance to open it anyway as the air cans often don't have enough pressure to overcome the additional pressure on the pins.Sometimes a hammer will do it but I usually put pressure on the gate somehow to trip it. I have run enough "junk" over the years to make sure that the gate is unlatched before I pick the body up beyond a certain point,some trucks are so bad that you have to load forward to keep material off of the gate.Ron G
I dont know if any other operators do it or not but I always check the tail gate of the trucks when the truck backs in pulls up etc. Hey it happens people forget...but when A driver does forgets it slows the whole operation down so I have just made it a habbit of checking the trucks myself.....funny thing.....you always know what trucks to check.
I heard of one contractor that used to fine his drivers $3 each time they pulled in for a load without remembering to latch the gate first. (And that was 25 years ago, when $3 was worth something.)
We enforce it with a 12 pack of beer.
I have made it a habit to get out and check after dumping that it latched back. I know it probably slows my production down and I am killing my knees when I jump out in a hurry, but I am just paranoid when I am in my personal dump truck. It does not bother me quite as bad when I am in the company's truck:cool2
I was hauling pond muck for a company that no longer exhists! Any how I went over a cross road that had the slight rise in the intersection and pop the mud pushed past the gate latches! I called my boss, and he told me to keep going! He then called me back and told me to go back, someone had seen the truck! Well they sent out a labor, a stupidvisor (YES LONG STORY), and a skid steer! I got a ticket for unsecure load, and we had to stay to clean the road, about 4 miles! The labor climbed in the bed of the truck and started yelling , "No wonder your gate popped open, you got the load from hell on this poor truck!" I needed salt locks but all I had was chains! I chained the gate and headed for the yard and before I got back, the latches popped again but the chains held the gate. there was some ooz from the opening, but not like an open gate! My lift axle knobs are like a small plastic cigarette lighter cap about 2 sizes smaller that the lighter knob! My gate is in a totally different place on the axle control center! From left to right I have bed cintrol and beside that is the PTO. just foreward and to the right is the front lift axle, and nex to it is the rear lift axle. Mounted to the front and on the left side is the tarp control. and all the way back center is the gate control!
We get road salt hauled to our facility by doubles from the docks on Lake Michigan. The trucking company had a set of doubles with a "shaky" latch. The last curve on the freeway before getting off for our yard had a "bad joint" for a number years. All their trucks could go over this joint w/o incident except the one and it would only pop open occasionally. The salt would spread out real nice at 55-60 mph It got to be if we got a call about a truck spilling a load of "white" gravel on "the curve" we would check our delivery schedule and see if XYZ Trucking was expected that day. Used to kid them about letting us pre storm, they didn't need to do that for us.
I had to move my gate switch up to my dash and then hooked up a red warning light that comes on when my gate is open. Works really well except I put the toggle right next to my headlight switch and well...you know what happened in the dark Luckily I was empty both times it happened...but could have been a real mess. So now I put one of those racing switch covers over the toggle switch so I can't accidentally open the gate without having to flip the cover up, then flip the toggle. So far it's been dummy proof. Sad to have to protect yourself...from yourself:cool2
Ain't that the truth!
We have a triaxle pig trailer that we chain gravel out with, if we have a longer run. The trick is, when chaining gravel, not to tip it it up too high, or the gravel goes to the back, over balances the trailer and it tips up and sits square on the tailgate. The next trick is to get it back down again. It happened to me once and our other drivers a couple of times. By slightly applying the trailer brakes you could make it hang back so that it didn't tip up. Anyway, we eventually welded two heavy chains on the drawbar so that if it does tip up, the chains catch it and stop it going any further. Rn'R.
I have had the gate come open a few times on the road, should put the lock on every load