We all have had interesting "scenarios" when it comes to loading machines (ex. machine won't start, 1 track not moving, etc..) What types of situations have you found yourself in or what extents have you gone to, to load a machine?
Several years back I had to help a lowboy driver recover a burnt up log skidder in the middle of the woods, Took a D6 dozer pushing and me on a 25 ton excavator draging it to get it up on the lowboy. Other fun things are trying to load smooth drum rollers onto a lowboy/ tilt trailor when everything is wet, lots of sliding. Just have to build up some spped and hope it makes it.
On 3 different occassions, our 860 scraper had to be loaded and moved back to the shop due to being unable to move. 1. sun gears in the diferentional went out and basically locked it in. I was able to go forward and backwards but couldn't steer. Got the deteach in line with it, and drove it on, using a TD-15C dozer to keep it straight. Really wasn't all that difficult. 2. Same project, bout 3 weeks later. Tourque convertor went out(after having been rebuilt by Palmer Johnson Compaines less than 400 hours before). This time couldn't even fire it up. Used the dozer to help lift the bowl off the ground, then chained it up. Chained the front and rear in a X pattern to keep it all straight, didn't need it articulating. Once again had the detach in line with it and used the dozer to push it on and keep it straight. 3. This fall, same machine, Tourque Convertor(once again rebuilt by PJC, :Banghead). THis time the machine wasn't in a place that could be reached with the tractor and trailer. After chaining the bowl up, we just hooked onto it with blade of the dozer to the front end of the machine and pulled it out of the woods where it was at, up to the road. Loading was bout like the last times. Really fed up with the PJC, looks like this time that somthing wasn't tightened down and the flywheel came apart. They will be :ban from working on any equipment I run ever again. Here is the link to the diff teardown pics. Trbo
My old JD410 TLB broke a shaft in the transmission and locked both rear wheels. I was about 50 yards from where I could load the machine, I had to walk it out with the backhoe. I had an over axle deck trailer behind a tri-axle to load it on with ramps about 5' long. I lowered the front bucket so it just cleared the ramps and dropped the stabilizers down so they were about 6" from the ground. Once I got the front axle up on the trailer, I took a deep breath and hoisted the rear end up in the air. It was a careful coordination between the rear stick and steering wheel but I finally got up on there without tipping. Unloading was just as thrilling, but I wasn't quite as nervous since I had pulled it off once already.
Had to load an old Insley excavator onto a flatbed trailer to take to the junkyard. Had to drag it about 500 yards with a PC 300 and drag it up onto a dirt pile. Truck driver backed into the dirt pile. I pushed it onto the trailer with the 300 while another guy picked up the boom and bucket with a Kobelco 220.
I had to load a Cat 740 that burned last year on a job. Steering hose blew, spraying a mist of hyd oil between the gaps in the turbo heat shield, causing a near total meltdown. Had to set up a hydraulic bypass to lower the bed with a 330 excavator, then used a choker from the excavator to the front of the truck to tow it and then get it ligned up to push onto the loboy. That was a little trickey, as there is only 9" of rubber on the trailer deck on each side. They are hard enough to center when they are running. I have no pics of the loading, but one of it burned, and onother one after it was chained down for transport.
What was the reason for putting the tarp over the burnt cab?
At what point do you decide to repair in the field vs trying to get the machine loaded? Is it hard to get someone to repair on the job site?
The tarp was to keep burn debris from flying all over the highway on the 140 or so mile trip to the dealers yard.
Was it a rental ?? Dealer: How did she work out for ya ?? You: Good, but she ran a little hot.
I used to have to load a 580L on a dovetail type truck, it would pull the front tires off the truck bed, good thing the turn brake worked good!. The front tires of the truck would come off the ground to. It was enough to get the ol butt to pucker!
loading excavator on lowboy, early morning, in february in the dakotas...steel on steel, -10 degrees, sheen of frost on tracks and lowboy..."old one was beavertail/ramps"...get to the "teeter point"....come down, slide off side of trailer onto one track, nobody gets hurt, just your shorts have a brown streak. lift other track off trailer, run lowboy out from underneath, try again.
Working at the Volvo dealer here in South Florida we had an artic truck come in with a bad drop box or something. It sat a few month in the summer, the company did not want to fix it. The entire bed filled with rain water, bed drain was clogged. Think it was a Volvo A35C. Lowboy came to pick up. The oldest mechanic at the shop took the biggest excavator we had, and large dual chain to drag up on the trailer. Move the front, move the back, move the front end, move the back end. Water going everywhere in our moon dust dirt yard. He put it on the low boy with all the water! I bed the first corner of the block was a wet one!
Loading my excavator on my old beaver tail with ramps on a hill.Forgot to put a couple of blocks under the tail lifted the truck up and down the hill i went and ended up in the snow bank.Before i loaded it again had to change the underwear had some fudge factor.. glen
I once loaded a 9650 John Deere combine that burned up. The combine was set up for 30" rows, so that meant that there was 98" of space between the burned up rims. I found a few fence posts that I could use for skids. I was pulling a 50' Muv-All double drop deck with a winch in the nose. With a double line snatch block and a tractor I was able to drag the combine on and haul it to the shop. I started this project at 11 am and by 4pm I was on the road--I was by myself and I was TIRED at the end of that day.
I never slid my excavater completly off the lo boy, but halve come darn close many times.I fixed the problem by installing steak pockets at the "teeter point"on the lo boy. I use a 2" dia. pin in each pocket,it catches the inside of the grouser pads and protrudes about 5" obove lo boy floor.I dont side around anymore.
I had a 580 case self unload in front of my house...I was backing it off the trailer and the brakes were a little sketchy...well hit the brakes and one wheel locked up solid and the front tires came off the trailer and the whole back hoe turned sideways...so now I am sitting there with one rear tire on the ground....the other rear tire sitting on the beavertail of the trailer and the front left wheel just bearly hangin on...and I am sittin in the seat with my ass puckered...I touched the steering wheel and over on its side it went good thing we had a winch on the truck to put it back up on its wheels since the way it landed it was blocking the whole street :Banghead felt like a moron with all the neighbors outside watching me roll a back hoe in the street...4 years later I am still reminded of it on a reg. basis! ointhead
Loading the excavator on the 20 ton tag is always fun in the winter, or in the rain. I moved an old JD 510 that a guy bought. It was tired to say the least, when I got the whold machine on the ramps the swing frame caught in the dirt. I had to spin around and push my self and then run it up on. Another time I moved a lull. I had never run one before and it was in "crab" mode. I got it on to the trailer and I wanted to hitch it over a little. Thats not easy when you have inches to spare. Finally figured out how to put it in "front steer only mode" and it was a snap.
Excavator Roll Over!! I made my debut in front of our local cat dealer. I was trying to load a mini excavator onto our backhoe trailer. The ramps were to wide to get both tracks on so I decided to just put one track on a ramp and use the bucket to crab walk the machine onto the trailer. Bad idea. It was raining and I was just about to the top when she slid back down off the ramp. Being that it was a mini my knees were in my chest and I just couldn't untangle and react fast enough. It went over in slow motion. Boy did I feel dumb. ointhead
I recover a lot of burnt or dead forestry equip w/ a Cat 215C LC. I usually drag them up beside my lowboy and put them on their sides. I then turn them right side up onto the lowboy and nudge them around as needed
I've had several of these trips. I load wrecked semis on my lowboy alot by myself. That can be a bear without a winch or when they have the front end knocked loose. If they steer I used to take a "girlfriend for the day" to help before I got married. lol (I'm sure I'll have to explain myself to St. Peter for that one fine day.) I did load a old D7E with the final drive appart. I jacked it up and chained a crosstie under the hard bar and the final housing and winched it on the detach with a D6D. Probably the most dangerous load I load is a scraper tractor and a set of 3 Weyco pans. We back 2 lowboys up back to back, detach 1 and start up over it with the tractor. We put the tractor and first pan on the rear trailer and the other 2 pans on the other. The dangerous part is driving over the trailer axles (6 of em). Better hope the inside duals are inflated evenly!
I finished a move for a guy who dropped a diff in his tractor . I had worked for him years before so he asked me to unload his 977 (A)? it was old . When I got to the repair shop I backed up to their unloading "ramp"(steel plates on ties, but just the right height for the lowboy , the old cat was running so I popped the chains off and started to back it off , had to straighten it a little pulled the steering clutch (old 977) and one track locked ,in a split second i was side ways sliding down the trailer ramps and then down the steel loading ramp felt like it took 10 minutes and nothing I could do about it .:beatsme:Banghead
Haulin' Jello Yesterday I found something that sounds simple but it was a pain! A scrap yard asked me to take a Cat 318c about 70 miles. Small hoe, quick easy money; right? I get there and find they also need to take an 8 foot ball of chain link fence and wire they use for a sweeper. It had no shape, just a wad they had mashed together. I put it on the front of the deck and started putting on chains and straps. It was like tying down jello! put a chain on and keep swapping binders, you'd pull 4 feet of slack, and find it had just changed shape. An hour and five chains and straps later it was sorta safe. The operator waiting on the other end said "I just grab it in the grapple" Once again I said::Banghead:beatsme
I wish I had pictures of it but we had a CMI RS500 burn down once. It was ugly and I don't remember how they got it on the trailer but I'm very lucky to have two badass lowboy drivers who can handle about anything. I like having heavy winches and we currently roll with folding neck winch trailers. Inoperable pieces can often be winched onto the trailer, but you can't do it with other set ups.
Nothing exciting I can think of off hand. But a few of similar stories. Like the time my muddy boot slipped off one of the brake pedals of a TLB while backing it down the ramps of dove tail. The only thing that kept me from going over was I had the sense (or something) to drop the front bucket keeping it from going completely off the trailer. I moved a ADT after a very heavy rain 6"+. The first time I hit the brakes (it was kind of hard) I see something in the mirror. I look out back in time to see a wall of water right as it hits the cab. I didn't know what to think as to where the water was coming from or what was going on. Now I always dump the bed before loading them.
Two good ones for confession time - The first one was a load issue. The truck delivering the bucket was a little light for the job. Should have been a dump truck not a F350. When I got the bucket backed off halfway, the weight transfer lifted up the rear axle of the truck off the ground. The driver wasn't in the cab, so all that was holding it in place was the rear axle with the truck in gear. No more brakes, the whole mess took off down the hill until the front axle of the truck went into some soft earth and jacknifed. I backed on off and tried to run the driver over with the bucket. Really I just made him run around some. The second was an operating issue not a load problem but I'm on a roll. I was operating a blade near a 20' dropoff, and the bank gave away. The problem was now I was highcentered and could not back off. All I had was my wife's Topaz I had used to get out to the site. I hooked up to the rear of the blade and tied off to the back of the Topaz. It was front wheel drive, all I needed was some downforce to tip me back down so the drives were in contact with the ground. I stuck it in Drive and let it pull against me while I worked the blade to get me off and away. In retrospect I could have lost the unit and my wife's car, but in the heat of the moment you get creative with all kinds of bad ideas. That time it worked. Now, older + wiser, I would have called for help.
One of the better ones that I have seen lately was more of an unloading challenge. Me and one of our other drivers were sent to a job to pick up an old water truck and a 345 that needed to be brought back to the yard. It was decided that I would pull the 9 axle and that the other guy (I wont use his name because he's bigger than me) would pull the beavertail because he is lazy (and bigger). That was fine with me as I would rather pull a 9 axle anyways, so we got hooked to our trailers and headed down the road. After about an hour we pulled into the job site, thanks to it being a saturday the place was empty and there was almost enough room for me to turn around. The other guy (joe pro) parked in the street and was loaded and chained down before I could even get myself wiggled into the corner and facing the other way. About the time I finally got turned around and the steam had stopped shooting from my ears joe pro decided that he should come over and see if he could help. We got my trailer split apart, loaded and put back together without any issues. Once I was chained down I noticed the way he had chained down the water truck. After mentioning that I always just go around the axles and never tie to the frame when hauling trucks I was quickly reminded that I am just a dumb kid and that I should just worry about my own load. Ok, fine with me! We hit the road with joe pro in the lead so that he could give me a heads up when something was headed my way, I didnt have any pilot cars. We made it all the way to the first corner before getting our first bit of excitement! As joe pro up ahead of me hits the corner the inside tires came a foot of the ground and about 100 gallons of water came spilling out of the top of the water truck he was hauling! I called him on the CB to let him know that the water truck was still full and was again reminded that he was far more experienced than me and that he knew what he was doing. Ok, do your thing dude! I chuckled to my self as we pulled over in the next turnout and he got out to open the valve and drain the water. After that whole incident we continued on our way to the sandwich shop for some lunch, where I was again reminded of what a rookie I am. With full bellys it was time to head back to the yard. What we didnt know was that the boss was waiting on the water truck for a little side project he was working on and that he was in a very impatiant mood. When we finally pulled back into the yard the boss was standing in front of the shop with his arms crossed and a big wad of chew in his lip (I have learned that this is a bad sign!) Luckly as I started splitting my trailer the boss went past me and over to joe pro and told him that he had been waiting for that truck all day and to get it off the trailer, NOW! Ignoring all this I unload and park the 345, then put the trailer back together and get my rig parked. I am shocked to see that after all this time joe pro still hasnt gotten a single chain off and the boss looks like he's about to lose it! Apperently when joe pro drained all the water it made the chains so tight that he couldnt loosen any of the poorly lubricated binders! I stood a safe distance away and listened as the boss not so calmly asked joe pro, "what kind of idiot loads a water truck without checking the tank? And why the hell would you chain to the frame, do you not no that suspension moves?" As joe pro tries to stammer out an answer that wont set off the now short fused boss I walk over and say, "you know, if your going to use the truck you could go ahead and fill it while it's on the trailer, once it has all that weight back in it you should be able to pull the chains off." As I walked to my pick up I here the boss not so calmly tell joe pro, "maybe I should send you with him for a while to learn a little common sense." Turns out that it's not always a bad thing to be the young dumb kid! :drinkup
Monster truck you are one hell of a story teller! I always enjoy them:usa
Why thank you sir! Im sure there will be more to come! :drinkup
I was loading a Bobcat S175 on an old tri-axle equipment trailer. I had the forks on and not really thinking, I drove straight onto the trailer, or at least I attempted to. I bounced on the ramos when I hit the top and the front wheels of the machine came off of the ground. I froze! I was sitting there seeing nothing like sky feeling like an astronaut before takeoff! Teetering on the edge of rolling over, I grab both travel arms and pull them back as hard as I could! The front wheels miraculously find the ramos again and I get back on Terra Firma. I get the machine turned around and BACK the machine onto the trailer, this time without incident. Yeah, I won't make THAT mistake again!
After posting in the "confesion is good for the soul" thread I feel as if a weight has been lifted. I guess it's time to admit to another one that I felt fit a little better in this thread. I'll start by saying that at 18 I thought I knew everything (who didnt) and found myself in a few predicaments because of it. At about 21 I realized that I was completely clueless and life has been much simpler ever since. While working for my dad fresh out of high school I look at the schedule and see that a D 8 needs to be moved from a logging site in the woods to a new job site two hours away. As much as I wanted to take it I knew that my dad would do it himself because he loved the oversize loads. I guess it's true what they say, like father like son! After much begging and pleading my dad very unwisely decided to let me do it. On the morning of the big day I go out to the yard to warm up truck number 23, my dads favorite truck and the one that some of you may remember was later put out of commision in a fire. As im warming it up my dad comes out of the house to make sure I know what im doing (I didnt) and to tell me to call him when I get loaded so he can meet me at the highway with the pilot car. As he is walking to the house to go back to bed he turns around and says, "dont do anything stupid". I pull out of the driveway and hit the road with every intention of following his advise. It took about an hour to reach the logging road and another hour from there to reach the dozer just as the sun was coming up. As I look over the situation I make the executive decision that there is no reason to drop the neck when the machine can so easily crawl over the back of the 16 tire cozad. I park the truck in the middle of the road facing downhill on the 10% grade and figure that this will make it even easier to get over up and over the back of the trailer. After firing up the D8R and getting lined up with the trailer I put the beast in first gear and begin to slowly climb the back of the trailer. As the machine reaches its tipping point I hit the brakes and let it rock on to the back of the trailer with all its weight, at about the same time I realize that I didnt set the trailer brakes! Thanks to a little thing called physics, the dozer being behind the trailer axles took enough weight off of the drives that they no longer had enough traction to hold the whole mess in place on the sloped gravel road. As we slide down the road and I realize whats happening all I could see was visions of my dads favorite truck demolished in a ditch and me getting the ass wipping of a lifetime! Suddenly common sence kicked in, I grabbed second gear and gave it wide open throttle trying to get my weight in front of the axles as quick as I could! As the dozer got to the deck enough weight was put on the drives that old truck number 23 was able to slide to a stop before it hit the ditch. After making sure everything was ok and changing my shorts I got the beast chained down and headed for the highway to meet up with my dad. Thankfully the rest of the trip was uneventful and I finished the day a little wiser. My dad never heard about what happened that day until a couple years ago when we were at the richie bros. auction in sacromento and he pulled a simalar stunt. On the sale line was about 5 of those tiny skid steers that you stand on the back of and all of them were on thier own car trailer. My dad being the big kid that he is, decides to jump on one and fire it up. After picking the bucket up and down and grinning like a little kid he starts backing up. As we all have learned a little gremlin known as physics comes into play when you do this. Sure enough the toung comes off the ground and the trailer starts rolling across the lot! My dad froze and rode it out... right into the back of an excavator that was parked ahead of him! I run over to make sure he's ok and he looks at me and says, "we need to get the **** out of here!" As we hightail it to the burger stand I decide that it was now safe to tell him about the time I set a world record for loading a D8. I mean come on, how can he get mad at me when I just watched him do the same thing right?! I guess it's true what they say, like father like son!
Luckily that isn't a ride I've taken, but seen it a few times. There a nice vid on youtube of a guy rolling a new D8 and doing whatever other damage the same way.
Monster Truck Those are two great stories. I nearly fell out of the chair with both of them. Sounds like you lucked out with the D-8. I have done the same thing a time or two, but always on flat ground, so there was no wild ride involved. At least you reacted quickly. Go on over, or back down fast, but whatever you do, don't just stop to think about it. By the time you stop to decide what to do, the wreck will be all over. I loved the water truck story. Lucky he didn't tip it over.
Well I guess I can tattle on myself one more time... A couple years ago I got sent out to pick up a 657 off a jobsite in the napa valley and bring it back to the customers yard in Ukiah for some repairs. I was told that the scraper had no brakes and the front motor barely ran. I figured that I had an easy day ahead of me and that I would be home early afternoon sittin by the pool with a beer in my hand, so the three of us, me and the two pilot car drivers, met at the yard at about 7am and proceeded to the local donut shop. We pulled into the parking lot that's nowhere near big enough for the cozad booster style 9 axle that was now hanging out of both ends and basically blocking the whole thing off. After stuffing ourselves with bread and sugar and filling our belly's with chocolate milk (im not a fan of cofee) we decided to get on our way and let some other customers into the place. We pulled into the jobsite later that morning and spotted the crippled scraper parked next to the soon to be vineyard that they were developing. With a wide open jobsite and a huge field to turn around in I expected this to be a cake walk. After getting the trailer turned around and split apart without issue I headed over to the scraper to load it up and head home to enjoy the rest of my day by the pool with beer in hand. It only took the three of us about an hour to get the front motor running on about three of its cylinders so I figured that was enough to run the hydraulics and the rear motor could supply all the forward power, I was set! I was wrong! I made it over to the trailer and got lined up just fine, had to use the can to slow myself down thanks to the non existent brakes. I started onto the trailer slow and easy because I didnt want to have to drop the can on the deck of the trailer. It all went pretty well until I got the front tires about two feet away from where I wanted them. Due to the uneven ground that the rear tires were on the machine didnt want to roll forward anymore, I started giving more and more power to the rear motor but wasnt getting anywhere. Finally just after my foot hit the floor the beast started creeping forward and I let off the throttle. Now I have run scrapers on jobs before and have even spent some time on the 657's, what I had never done however was run a "B" model with the air controlled rear throttle that has a few second delay. So as I let off the throttle the motor kept winding up until the gutless old beast climbed right up on top of axles, went across the all four of them and the front tires dropped off the back of the trailer. I of course had my foot buried to the floor on the brake pedal wich was really just a waste of effort, hitting neutral would have been far more effective. Now with the cutting edge hung up un the frame of the trailer and the front tires not able to hit the ground I was screwed, so much for my easy day. After a lot of head scratching and discussion on the matter we decided to bring one of the other 657's over to hook up to the back of this one and pull it backwards and into place on the trailer. The idea worked and we got it chained down and ready to haul home. I figure a came out pretty luck over all, two flags, one oversize load sign and a good bit of paint missing from the frame of the trailer where cutting edge hit wasnt to bad of a damage report considering what happened, too bad the boss didnt see it that way. Probably would have been a good idea to have the second scraper hooked up the whole time considering the whole no brakes issue but I guess thats why they say "live and learn." I finally did get to drink that beer while sitting by the pool, just too bad it was at 11:00 at night!
so we have an old lumber truck, just a little ih with a dt466 and a five and 2. it has over a million miles on it an i have become quite fond of using it for moving attachments and my gravel and trench boxes. I hook it up to a triple axle flatbed superior and have a ton of deck space. anyhow i had up to the snowmass ski hill to pick up the trench box, get it loaded, then throw the rt in the box. metal on metal?? no worries. so i chain down the bedding box with the roller inside of it....chained down to nothing. so i take off head down the hill, everything is fine.. now i am doing 35 mph and here come a long sweeping left. i break a littlle bit and grap the turn... i feel the roller go up on it's side... so i try to take it real wide until the roller sits back down... now the high side wheels are coming up.. i come off the road a bit.. fishtail when she sits back down and say a quik "thank god".. eversince taking it a bit slower.
Not nearly as exciting as some, but seemed to get me blood flowing. Loading on a tilt bed with a JD 450 loader, the truck was headed down hill in gear. As the dozer tilted the trailer not enough compression to hold the load. Slowly was headed down the edge of the road riding on the seat of the crawler. Put the bucket down hard enough to hold the crawler I hoped and bailed off got into the truck just as it was going into the ditch. Stopped as easy as I could so the loader would not be in the dump truck. Then hurry and tie the crawler down before someone came and asked why I was parked in the ditch loading. I carried a few 4x4 from then on in the truck. Those in a hurry, heck this won't take long jobs seem to always go bad!
This story is hardly worth telling if it weren't for the audience involved. (and isn't worth telling after reading Monster Truck's stories! Names have been changed to protect the guilty... I used to work for Untied Runtals, and at the time the manager was lacking in couple of key managerial qualities, such as temper, leadership, honesty, integrity, lawfulness, anger management, decency and caring. Other than that he was a nice guy (according to his friends)who sold copied Satellite Pay-Per-View (porn and sports basically) Decoder cards for really good prices. His office was kinda like a second floor penthouse on the edge of our yard, and it had mirrored picture windows on 3 sides, so he was always watching. Sometimes when the sun was just right, it looked like there was a lidless Eye wreathed in flames looking down and seeing all. I always had a strange urge to wear a ring too... Anyway! we parked the fleet pretty much right under his office, facing away away from it. There are many stories of hauling 12,000 pound+ rockwheel trenchers or ASV CTL's on a 9,000 pound rated surge-brake trailer up (and worse, down!) steep windy roads in the hills around the Whine Valley. He finally got tired of me Whining about it, and got a 35 foot gooseneck triple axle backhoe trailer with angle-iron ramps, and told me to use that for hauling all the small stuff, and quit using the low-deck equipment trailer. Now, loading 5k warehouse forklifts, Genie Lifts, Scissor lifts, small trenchers, double-drum rollers, etc on that trailer was interesting! They planked the ramps making them unsafe for one person to lift, and put a winch on the front to make it possible to load forklifts and scissor lifts. Oh, and the F550 it was pulled with had a 12 foot flatbed, which meant the welding shop next door installed the gooseneck hitch 2 feet behind the axle. I could get the front tires of the truck in the air if I had a heavy load! It was kinda fun driving through town bouncing them like some lowrider with hydraulics... Wasn't very fun anywhere else though. Oh, and they re-decked it with Pressure-treated 2x, which I then dropped a forklift through and they never fixed that hole which was right at the back of the trailer near the ramp. And if I used the small trailer to haul a small load into a tight location where the big trailer (which was longer overall that our shorter hydraulic tail semi) wouldn't fit, I got yelled at. So now that the stage is set. I was hauling a full load on the hydraulic tail, had a 410 with no brakes on the neck, then I was going to load a Bobcat sweeper attachment tucked up under the 410, a stretch limo 8 seat golf cart, and then the bobcat crossways on the trailer. So I cruise on up, get the sweeper in place, unhook and proceed to back off the trailer. Now, you already know what happens next, but I'm gonna tell you anyway! About the time my back wheels hit the ramp, I begin trying to kick myself. If you have ever tried to kick yourself whilst sitting in a bobcat, you know that this takes some skill and flexibility. Which I didn't have. And then I decided I had better concentrate on the situation so I would be able to kick myself later in a better location, and avoid the Eye from having to kick me with some of it's wreathing flames. I was lucky that I had taken the time to train with skid-steers previously, and had tested out balance points and experimented with ways to save wear on the front tires by putting distance between them and the abrasive ground, so I was able to apply that training to this situation. So by now, my front tires have left the deck, but failed to establish firm contact with the ramp. In fact, they are reminding me of a cat trying to sniff out a morsel of food that you have just set on the floor for it. They check for the location of the Ripped Starling Chunks (what all cats actually desire cat food to be) in every direction but the one it is actually in. In this case, I was restricting the 'Cats exploration options to the vertical plane only, which makes this story much less interesting for you. So, I use the controls to keep the wheels below my sight line since I like being able to see where I youstawas, which means I am following a logarithmic curve between speed and distance traveled. And it's a long ramp, and I am getting closer to the Eye all the time. I was lucky in that I had the engine revved up to Starling Ripping speed despite the fact I was maneuvering on a trailer, so I was able to keep my horizontal acceleration matched with my vertical acceleration until I hit the bottom of the ramp at Mach .000764543. My tail barely missed the pavement, and I settled her down with just a couple of minor bounces and then drove away as if nothing had happened. I finished loading the trailer, trying not to look like I was walking funny, made a quick stop at the Walmart across the street for some planned clothing purchases, and then went on my way. I was lucky that the A/C intake for the bosses office was on the other side of the building. He might have wondered what the smell was, you know, from the revving engine... The customer later asked why there was a hole ripped out of the middle of the seat, and I told him there was a lot of vandalism in the area. Since I seem to have tried to make up for quality with quantity, here is the condensed version for those that don't want to read the whole thing: I backed a bobcat off of a trailer with no weight on the front under the mean bosses window, but was barely able to save it by speeding up as I went down the ramp. The End There, aren't glad you didn't waste all that time reading the whole post? :Banghead:Banghead More recently (a few of weeks ago) I was trying to load a large double drum roller with a bad hydrostatic tranny onto a wet tiltbed trailer with steel over the tires. It's the type where it takes a few seconds to ramp from stop to full power and back to stop, and it doesn't provide equal power to both drums, so the uphill one will spin while the downhill one takes a nap. It's fun when you are giving it full power to climb the deck, the rear drum gets onto the deck and falls asleep, the front drum hits the steel plates providing all of 2 inches of contact, it starts working it's way sideways and won't stop turning. I went off over the corner of the trailer a couple of times before I gave up, got it as far on as I could and get it stopped, got on the backhoe and shoved it the rest of the way on. (I was alone). I had some rubber mats, but they were too cold, hard and slick and would either just let it slip, or get kicked out. Someday maybe I will work somewhere where they have the right equipment for the job! :drinkup Ben~
I've got two stories that are pretty close to the same as Monstertruck's stories with the 657. The only difference is my story involved 2 different 621B scrapers. Now I'm not a truck driver by trade but there have been times when I had to get in the seat and as carefully and illegally as possible take a piece of equipment down the road. 1: Up until a few years ago the company I used to work for had a fleet of about 13 Cat 621B scrapers and most of them didnt have brakes that worked. The only way we hauled them from jobsite to jobsite was on a old short Hyster cradle trailer or pan trailer as we called it. You drove the scraper up over the back, over top of the top of the trailer and back down. Some of you older truck drivers probably know what I'm talking about?? A lot of the drivers we would get were scared to death of this trailer only for the fact that they didnt like having to drive the scraper up over the hump for the fear of the pan sliding off the side. So a lot of the time I would get sent out on scraper moves. So on this peticular day we were going to take a scraper back to the shop for some work. She originally need the floor in the bowl redone and the hitch overhauled. So I started the old girl and let her warm up a bit, meanwhile the truck was parked on a hill with the tractor facing up because once we got the scraper loaded it would be too tight to navigate through the development. I get up in the seat and fasten my seatbelt and start up the street to the trailer. As I'm approching the trailer I notice that the engine isnt reving up all the way with the pedal to the floor....no big deal, probably one of the links is bad or something. I start the climb up over the hump and right as I get to the top to go over the axles i let off on the throttle and the S.O.B. DIES !!!! Back down off the trailer and down the hill I go with NO BRAKES and no hydraulic power!!! The whole time I'm trying to crank it back up and the engine is just spinning over. Now in my mind I'm thinking " This is it.....my last great ride...I'm gonna take out a bunch of expensive cars and knock out a row of new townhouses before I come to a stop. I'm gonna die on a P.O.S. scraper." Now the bowl is already on the ground but not doing a damn bit of good going backwards other than tearing up asphault. By now I'm probably going 10-15 MPH in Reverse and the cars and townhouses are getting closer. Quick thinking I pull back on the accelerator pedal as to shut of the engine and push it back to the on position and hit the starter one more time. HOT DAMN I got er going now. I managed to get it started up and turned just in time to avoid a car wreck and a home wreck. So now my adrenaline pumping so much that I had to park it and get off and dig my underwear back out of my butt and settle my nerves. We eventually got her loaded up and headed to the shop. But as we were pulling off the jobsite the forman called me on the radio to let me know that that machine has a fuel problem too ointhead. The rack in the injection pump was sticking and if you snapped the throttle or let up to fast it would shut down.
You should have told the neighbors that is how you unload all the time.
I was working on a farm that had an old Ford and Beaver tail.Had to load a Stieger with no brakes.As I was going over the tail my navigator got to short to see.When I leveled out he was waving his arms like he was trying to fly.Him and the rest of the crew did fly when she dropped off the side.I was braced so tight in the cab my muscles hurt.Drove it off the trailer and reloaded.All in a days work.I just love excitement.
One of my least favorite loads is the Cat D-400 trucks. With the offset cab, it is hard to center up on the trailer without a spotter. We haul Volvo's and Cat 7XX series trucks all the time, and they are easy enough for one person. First time I had to load a D-400 by myself was an experience. It is still the only machine I have ever had fall off of a lowboy. It is made worse by the fact that there is only about 1/3 of the tire on the deck of the trailer once you pass the 10' wide section over the axles. My first trip, I lined up (I thought) and headed up onto the trailer. I made it about halfway up the deck, and felt the truck leaning left a little. This happens when there is less tire on one side than the other. I stopped to look, and had only 6 inches of tire on the deck. I tried backing up while turning slightly, but all this did was get the rear off the other side. When I pulled back forward, the left front dropped off the trailer. I stopped and thought about it a bit, then decided to turn left and drive all the way off the trailer, then try to line it up again. After this, I lined up again and tried again. Too far to the right the second time. Repeat of driving off the trailer, and line up for round 3. I am NOT giving up on this. Finally, the third time, I got it centered. There is about a 2" window where you will stay on the trailer, and off either side of this 2 inches, and you are going over the side. The good thing is the trucks are stable enough to drive off the side without upsetting or anything like that. I remember my then new driver going for his first D-400. When I got the call from him, I knew already what had happened. You should have heard him when I told him "No problem, just turn left and drive on off the trailer and try it again" He was pretty sure I had lost my marbles, until I assured him the same thing happened to me.
I told my helper to fill the excavator with fuel, and of course he didn't, so when it came time to load, it was low on fuel. So when i drove it up the ramps you can guess what happened. Half on the trailer, half on the ground. So the machine won't move, and we cant move the trailer either. Thanks to computer controls, when the fuel pressure drops it sets a code and it wont even crank. Try as i might i cant recall exactly how we got that thing running again. I think we pumped the primer plunger about a million times and it finally decided it would crank. Lots of screwing around just because it was low on fuel. Won't let that happen again.
After reading some of the above stories maybe its time to 'fess up to one of my own. In a rather big hurry (as normal) I loaded our D9L on a slope, once up on the trailer I looked and noticed that fence posts were passing by at an astounding rate. After what felt like 5 minutes I realised that I was stopped on the truck but the lot was moving down the hill. My father was running to catch the truck but I was loosing him fast! I eventually came to my senses and backed up until the ripper was clear of the beaver tail and dropped it in, and I must say that it stopped me quicker than the brakes ever have. Lesson 1 put trailer brakes ON Lesson 2 DONT load on a slope! Lesson 3 ALWAYS keep fresh undies in truck!!
Got to watch a pretty good one this afternoon: Yesterday I got to play mechanic for the day (stupid rain) and one of my projects was to pull the main lift rams out of one of our beavertail trailers and have them rebuilt. I told the driver to back the trailer into the shop when he got done with it and I would pull the rams out, I also told him his trailer would be down for a couple days until we got the rams back from the hydrolic shop. So when he got done for the day he backed the trailer into the shop, pointed the rams out to me to make sure I understood that the ones with oil all over them were the ones that leaked, and then he headed home for the day. I proceeded to tear the trailer apart after finding a few other issues with it and sent the rams off to get repacked. It took quite a bit of time with a grinder and a welder but I finally got all the other problems fixed just in time to head home myself. I used a forklift to fold the tail up so I could pull the truck out of the shop and park it back in the yard with a lockout tag hanging from the controls just incase anyone forgot. That brings us up to today when said driver was asked to come in and deliver a skid steer to a job site in the next town over. Parked in the yard are two roll back trucks and the now non functional beavertail, as you can probably he decides that he's gonna load the skid steer on the beavertail despite the lockout tag hanging from the side of it. Me and the head mechanic decide to stand at the shop door and watch to see how long it would take super trucker to remember he had no lift rams in his trailer. After about ten minutes of ignoring the lockout tag and pushing/pulling on every lever on the side of that trailer (luckily I had capped off the disconected lines) and getting the trailer to do everything but lift the tail he walks over, looks the head mechanic straight in the face and says, "my trucks broken, the PTO quits working when I try to lift the tail". After looking at each other to make sure we both heard the same thing we decided it was time to remind him that the trailer was missing a few parts and it would probably be best to try and load the skid steer on one of the other trucks. I really wonder some people manage to find there way home at end of the day
5 amp fuse blows when brake button pushed i know this isnt a big loader but i need help with my skidsteer please when i start my nh185 it starts fine and the seatbelt and seat switches work fine they ave even been replaced but when i push the brake lock switch the 5 amp fuse in the fusebox blow and it quits. It started doing it after it as used for a little while then it got worse and worse til now it blows as soon as i hit the button. any suggestions.
Everyone else said it couldn't be done! Loading and transport of oil related equipment from central Poland to Norway, except to say that it measured 5.70m wide and 4.23m high. Within a matter of days, our team had researched and determined a suitable high load route, avoiding all fixed obstructions. It was then just a matter of arranging to remove overhead cables (electricity, telephone, tram etc).
Not so much a loading challenge as a hauling challenge. This was us moving a used Cat 797B from one mine (Las Pelambres) to another (Chuquicamata) in Northern Chile to go on an extended demo for a potential new customer. I was in one of the escort vehicles and had no idea that someone had filmed it. No-one argues with you in a rig like that. Total journey distance I would estimate as about 800 miles, in that time the load went from Pelambres at 10,000ft above sea level down to sea level to pick up the Pan-American highway, then back up to 9,000ft to Chuqui. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elNyQ0xZ6mY&playnext=1&list=PLFBC57743EF4322E3 No permitting, no axle weight restriction, no width restrictions, no length restrictions, no bridges, no overhead power lines (well none less than about 40ft above the road anyway), no rain so it really doesn't matter how much weight you put into the road, underneath it's all solid rock. We moved stuff like this all the time. Somewhere I have some photos of a fully-assembled 994F @ 400,000+ lbs on the back of that same lowboy with 2 tractors pulling and one pushing. I must try to dig them out sometime.
Found it, or them to be precise ............. These 4 date from 2003 which was our first attempt to move a fully-equipped machine. This one is from 2004, and you can see the transport contractor's getting the hang of it ...... 3 tractors might seem like overkill until you realize that they are climbing an 8% grade at that point.
These are from 2006 and the operation's getting more professional. Lastly this video I found on Youtube is of the same highway (B475 from La Negra to Escondida, Chile) and shows just how the same contractor Ferrovial is moving gear at the moment. 8 years has seen a lot of progress. This 797B is going down the same 8% grade as the lowboy with the 994D was shown climbing it in the previous post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOWQpI8Izew&feature=related