#ironmountainironhauling Just another day in paradise...or several of them over the summer here. Above: 10-20-17: Town of Brattleboro, Vt. 872 grader I'm hauling to Nortrax in Springfield, Vt. for repairs. Above: 1998 IH bucket truck from Ritchie Bros. auction in Franklin, Ct. to Lancaster, (Buffalo) NY last week also. 3 truckers arrived at the auction in 3 weeks, and all 3 declined to haul it due to the 12' height. This is what we are facing these days in this business, unskilled, non-thinking individuals with no clue. It was 14' 10" on my trailer until I removed the boom from it's center perch and offset it off to the ditch side and then took a chain and 3 binders, and took the slack out of the chain from the trailer to the boom and got it to 13' 3" and shuffled off to Buffalo with no worries. Unreal how the others' couldn't figure out such a simple thing, but it's what's out there nowadays unfortunately. Above: a Case 880D from waaaaay up in Colebrook, NH to down around Great Barrington, Mass. this summer. This machine is a creampuff, low hours, well maintained one owner, shed kept for the past 30 years, a rare find. Above: Komatsu PC220CLP just down the road from me, move it a lot for my neighbor/farmers to do field work around town.
More work pics... This past June; HydroAxe from Leyden, Mass. to Rehoboth, Mass. Above and below; JD combine from Westerlo, NY to Berlin, Vermont. Had an extra wheat head that we had to use a second truck for, can't put any more than one piece on a permitted load so we had to run two trucks. Interesting factoid here: Applied for NY state oversize permits on Friday morning, figuring they'd be issued by Monday at noon worst case scenario. Monday at noon, no permits. Can't mess around...gotta get the job done. Set course for Vermont, sweating every inch in NY state but once across the line in Vt. we're blanketed annually up to 12 ft. wide. Get an email from my permit service provider Wednesday (2 days after we're all done) that NY state had DENIED the permits for some unknown reason. Oh well, better to beg forgiveness than ask permission some days. Arrived in Berlin, Vt. that afternoon unscathed, eventless trip.
Some more work pics... 525 Cat skidder for a local logger... TD 15 Dresser....I love this bulldozer, always liked these. Love the sound, LOL. JLG lift from the factory reconditioning place in Warfordsburg, Pa. going to central Vermont to a used equipment dealer. Deere 624K from Attleboro, Mass. to Essex Jct., Vt. to Alex Lyons auction. This didn't sell at this site, so Lyons relocates things and tries again.
Last set I promise...Had to include the rollback in this series... Up in Vermontville, NY (Saranac Lake area,) grabbing this absolutely rusted out old F-550, but a strong running 7.3L and a 6 speed freshly rebuilt with less than 50 miles since Ford redid it. Hauled it all the way down by Boston, Mass. for a Craigslist buyer. He just really wanted that 7.3L & 6 speed BAD. I lost the tranny in the rollback on this trip, 6 miles away from home that night...but I got it home and 3 days later I had stuck another good used 12513 speed in and kept chugging. Better losing it 6 miles from home than 240 miles away up there in the Adirondacks...! Richford, Vermont...hauled a 540 and a 440D from up there that'd been sitting for 6 years there down to Williamsburg, Mass. We brought fresh batteries and a can of ether with us, replaced the batteries and the 440D lit up in 6 revs. The 540 I had to crack injector lines but shortly after lit up as well. Long day, good day with my son, TJ in the rollback truck. Richford's brushing up against the Quebec border. Placing some brand new maple sap equipment into this brand new sugarhouse in Guilford, Vt. this past spring. Not much room for error here. I think this was last New Years Day 2017...loading this seized up 240 Timberjack on a landing and carried it to have the engine redone.
How tall are you with a skidder on the rollback? Or, better question, what's the deck height on that rollback? We've talked a good bit on Heavy Truck Forums, so you know I have a 35k single axle with a very good rollback on it, I'm good for 10 tons easy, but my height is just over 4'. That severely limits what I can carry. I really like that lowboy, too. The only thing more versatile is a Landoll, but you are lower.
I don't care for Landoll's cuz of deck height. I have enough troubles with my paver trailer, but i get by. Rollback deck is high at 4' 3". It's been fine for all the TLB's and skidders i move, but I'm going to be cutting that frame and marrying a newer air ride cutoff to it this winter. Then I'm seriously considering not putting the rollback body back on and making it a tractor. I will surely miss it I'm sure, but the ratio of use as a rollback vs. a tractor is way lower than i wish it was. Insurance is such a bear now that I'd rather channel our energy towards more productive things than let one sit around just looking pretty. Besides that, every time I move something locally, it never is enough money for the effort I put in around here.
I've got a trail-eze version of a landoll. It's right at 3' tall, and I don't use it as much as I thought I would. It is really nice for loading forklifts because of the low loading angle, but its a really heavy trailer. I prefer the way the trail eze is built vs landoll's of the same era. My 5th wheel doesn't move, the trailer pivots at the neck. The landoll's of its age had the cylinders lifting the 5th wheel and necks all the way up, and I never cared for that. I really like your kenworth with the rollback, there's a hauling company by me, that has built one with "lopro" type rear axle, they haul a lot of TLB, and 10k telehandler forklifts with it. It gets into some real tight spots. I think its not much over 3' tall. They have a huge double folding ramp set up, and I don't know if the bed even tilts, its so short, they might get by with just the ramps. Will you go 8 bag kenworth suspension, or some type of 4 bag, hendrickson/ neway?
What's your height restrictions over there? Even 14' is low by our standards
That's a interesting lowboy trailer. why not have a drop in front of the rear axles? can you make it level? I have not seen one like that around these parts. I like the rollback.
I actually have a cutoff here I picked up a few months ago that's a 2005 IH air ride with Rockwell rears. That's going to be the new back half of the rollback truck. Yeah, I'm going to miss the ease of maneuvering in tight spots with that rollback I know, but I don't have any dedicated contracts, it's all customer call so it doesn't stay busy enough to warrant keeping it in this configuration anymore. Too bad too. I like it a lot, but it's just not practical enough for me.
We're at 13' 6"...federal standard. The northeast is nothing but low underpasses here. Technically you need to permit anything higher than that.
It's a paver special, designed for a paving machine to run up on it with nothing to obstruct it, with a roller, skidsteer, etc. I hallucinated a bit about dropping the deck level at the wheels but then I'm restricted to the length of the well. Right now i have 35' of usable deck space which is valuable to have. I just work around the height issues. It's 18" from the neck to 8' back, then graduates to 37" at the wheels so i can usually make things low enough to be comfortable.
Ah I see. We're around 13'1 standard, but can go to 14'8 before needing a permit as long as it's an indivisible load.
Lots of good pictures Lowboy. Can never have too much round headlight KW. That's too bad you can't keep the rollback busy enough to justify it staying a rollback. I've keep thinking it'd be nice to have a truck setup like that, but it'd probably sit around most of time. I have a bit of an obsession with knuckleboom cranes and always thought putting the two together would be handy. Passed a T800 rollback yesterday that had a decent sized knuckle tucked in behind the cab.
You know, I've hallucinated about a knuckleboom many times, thinking it'd be a handy son of a gun to have. But the reality of it lies in an old saying that is rock-solid tried and true..."Location, location, location"...and I ain't in a great one. If I were closer to more people, crime, drugs, shootings, etc. I'd probably be busier than a one armed paper hanger all the time, but I choose to live out in the farmland and woods for more obvious reasons, LOL... Well, I'm "almost" done with the power steering conversion project on the '78 A Model tractor. Started Monday, never thought I'd be working on it 5 days later, but parts was a bit of a setback. Everything was going great until I ordered the splined adapter plate from Cat that drives the P/S pump off the compressor drive gear. Ordered it to be overnighted Tuesday afternoon from York, Pa...they never shipped it till Wednesday, got it Thursday. Then I was looking at the steering shaft yoke and good thing I did on Tuesday, cuz I saw the 1" splined yoke that slipped onto the old manual box shaft and then looked at the "new" P/S box shaft and right away saw there was a difference. Had to track down a 3/4" splined yoke and that was a project in itself. Got turned away from a Peterbilt dealership, a KW dealership, a driveline specialist and a truck and equipment builder before I was sent to a local automotive parts store that I figured I was wasting my time walking into. Turned out a woman there who had experience working at an old Mack dealership was familiar with that part and spent an unbelievable amount of time hunting, searching and calling around until she located one at the mfgr. out west somewhere. Nowadays in this throwaway society we live in, they're selling us a whole non-serviceable steering shaft assy. instead of the yokes and U Joints like I'm used to changing when the are worn. Hat's off to Jill at Sanel Auto Parts in Concord, New Hampshire for a wicked good job! Bought a new block heater kit from the Peterbilt store (which is a 2 hour drive from home,) and went to install it and found he sold me the wrong block heater...so that set me back another day now, awaiting on UPS to drop the right one off today at some point. Never goes like you plan. But after all this, it's gonna be worth it when I can steer this thing with one finger instead of both arms and legs.
Last 2 pics...only 4 at a time can you post. Don't worry, I'm gonna paint everything....lol. Gathered up used parts from all over the place to piecemeal this together. The P/S box and spring hanger came from Strickland's Truck Parts down in Cana, Virginia last summer, the pump and reservoir I pulled off a truck I parted out, drag link off another parts truck, the rest is all hand made or store bought. Can't just walk into your friendly neighborhood KW parts counter anymore and ask for 1978 parts without getting that "face"....
Glad you found Jill! She sounds like Carol at our local NAPA dealer, ask her to look into something and she will go out of her way to get an answer for you!
I find it harder all the time to find used truck parts, for older trucks. The truck junkyard by me has almost no old trucks, they get trucks in, they pull off and rack, what they think might sell, and scrap the rest. With all the old school stuff disappearing from the roads, and nothing but the new "aero" type trucks, it's going to be interesting. Glad you could find what you needed. It seems good parts guys are hard to find, especially with older stuff. I went for parts on my 98 western star, and the manager (dealership) had to help the new parts girl look it up, I heard him say to her "its hard to look up stuff on those old trucks", and I'm thinking "that's the newest thing I own!" It gets really difficult when you're changing things around, and don't have the "correct" parts #'s, you just explain what you're doing, and the counter guy says "you can't" or "you can, but I have no idea what you need". And while were discussing fixing old trucks, I'm curious where the next generation of dump trucks is going to come from. By me, there's lots of guys who have taken old sleeper trucks, pulled the sleeper, slap a dump bed on it, and off to hauling. There's no market like that for the old/ worn out "aero" trucks. The ones I see that are past running on the road, get the engine, trans, and rears pulled, and crush the rest, because there's no use for them. No, the old over the road trucks, may not have been set up for dump trucking with light spec rears, air ride and too tall of gears, but a lot of guys have made it work.
Lowboy and HVY I want a knuckle boom too. Ultimate truck would be 60-70K hook lift with an articulating crane behind the cab. That would be handy as a shirt pocket. Lowboy good to see you're staying busy.
Sounds like me when I was still at the quarry! Someone would make a comment on how old the plant was I would say something like, "It's not that old I helped assemble that conveyor and used a jack hammer to dig the footers for the supports!"
Thanks CM...been consistent for a few years now. Enjoying the ride, the older nostalgic trucks and making new customer relationships, friends and the challenges of the game itself.
Might as well post yesterday's mission. A guy called me Friday afternoon about carrying his 430 cat TLB from a used dealer in Massachusetts to Maine. Said he'd talked to several haulers and they all had some excuse to not do it. I was over there Saturday morning, loaded and hauled azz to get it to him before dark. He was tickled, happy and we'll do more again someday. Beautiful day for a fall ride to Maine with a Cat backhoe in an A model KW. ... but my phone won't let me add photos here...???
Here we go, I had to download from the PC...the "Upload a File" button doesn't work here with my phone for some odd reason. Saturday 10-28-17; Cat 430 TLB from Phillipston, Mass. to Greene, Maine.
Lowboy, just discovered your thread this morning. Nice to see the older rigs still at it and earning their keep in the digital world. Man, that rollback truck is a real looker!