Wreckers are some of the coolest looking trucks in my opinion. Here are a bunch of pics i found on the internet or took myself at some point. Feel free to post pics of trucks you have seen or found.:usa
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I have a 1974 gmc and a 1984 kenworth w-900.Bothe have holmes 750 wrecker beds.The gmc has a welder and torch on it.I dont do much towing,But I use them for "winch outs",repair work, and rigging.I would feel naked without them.I will get some pictures.Its hard to beat an old 750 holmes.
Those 750 holmes beds were pretty nice and pulled real well. When I was in high school I worked at a parts store/wrecker service. We had an old Pete, 5+4 and a 750 Holmes. Then got a Holmes 1701 hydraulic, which is basically the same winches as a 750 with hydraulic drivees and boom. I'll see if i can find and scan some of those old pictures I took. Kirk DeFoor
Nice pictures
THose are some nice trucks!!
How about recovery gone bad? These were taken from a job site I was on years back. The concrete truck was bringing concrete for footings. The truck drove up on to the building pad, but found a soft spot on the way in. The driver shut down the drum because he was afraid it would pull him over. I tried to pull it out with our D7H, but broke the tow hooks off. Thats where we stopped. They called a wrecker service that "knows how to get is out, he does it all the time." We sat back and watched the show. The driver could not get enough stabilizer into the pad to keep from pulling himself around. So, I buried the blade on the 7 and he chained up, the end result is as follows. Btw, the cement mixer only sat for 45 minutes, by the time she hit the ground, no cement came out of the drum. Truck had only been in service for a short time.
1701 was a great bed,but what holmes wasent.Its amasing what can be done with them.I like the idea of having a wrecker or recovery forum.Maybe we should ask the founder about it.
Ken Webers Rotator out to help stabilize my Quad and assist moving it sideways. BTW, the truck was fully loaded. It wasn't driver error, asphalt just gave out and truck sank sideways.
Thats a bad deal with the concrete truck.The tow hooks on the front are only good barely stuck situations.Any more than that you have to pull off the frame rails.I take a 5/8 chain under the steering axil back up to the frame on both sides for a front pull.I am surprised the wrecker driver put the d7h in front of the wrecker .I would put the d7h about 40 feet in front of the mixer and the wrecker to the upper side,run one line over the mixer drum to keep it from tipping and the other line to the front of the mixer truck back to the d7h with snatch blocks"3 part line from wrecker to d7h".But its easy to criticize sitting behind a screen and keyboard. Look's like we have a wrecker and recovery forum started.Great pictures Turbo21835.
Here is a picture of my 1974 gmc wrecker moving a grain bin for a farmer.the second picture I am repairing a bent sprayer boom.I never know at the start of the day what we will need the truck for,Chances are By the days end we need it for something.
Here is a good one Started out with a stuck box van, then look what happened. I have been around a lot of ground like this in the spring. It just swallows anything. http://tow411.yuku.com/topic/6729/t/when-you-think-your-having-a-bad-day.html?page=1
The narrow driveway can be bad with little or no sholder.You don the rite thing by calling the wrecker service.Alot of drivers will fight it,rocking back and forth getting stuck worse or turn the truck over.These new rotating wreckers are impresive.good pictures.
I am pleased to say that ground like that I have never encountered, and long may that continue. Great pics and link Jerry, many thanks. :notworthy
You just knew that was going to end in tears, I dont trust those darn trucks sat on the level, never mind at that sort of angle.
Here is a picture of my 1984 kenworth w-900 750 holmes with Lacrosse lowboy.
Hear is a picture of my first wrecker.Its a 1967 chevy C30 with hydraulic bed that I built In 1990.I have used it for towing and alot of recoveries.It has smallblock 350,4 speed,and 5.33 rear end.
What does that thing weigh??? That's quite a boom!
I have never wieghd it.To think after all the years and jobs I have don with it ,and never had it on the scales.I would guess it around 9500 to 10000 LBS.The boom is two 10 inch channel frames welded together.It ends up making a 10x5 rectangle tube for the main boom.It has a I beam manual pullout section in side it.The winch is a 20,000 LB. garwood with hydraulic drive.Its towed Cars,trucks,farm tractors.And recoverd everything under the sun.Its pulled our simi-trucks out of the mud.One time I pulled my fiat-allis 16b out of the mud with the chevy wrecker.Its been a good old truck.
You're right, those rotators can do some nice work.. Shifted the front of the truck sideways, then backed behind me stabilized the truck as I drove forward. Kenny was out himself, instructed me to drive slow, as too much speed and I'd probably pull the wrecker over since he was boomed out over the side for the back side of the recovery.
The rotating wreckers are awesome.Its like a crane married a wrecker,they had a baby and named it"rotator".Truly impressive trucks.
Sorry guys I should have included a pic with the boom extended.Here it is.
Recovery job for our company. For more pictures of this recovery, see:
Link is the wrong one I'm going to have to say. Looks like a mini excavator issue.
nothing too special but here is one that happened on a job i was on this summer
I may be confused on the term recovery. Does it only apply to trucks? :beatsme My link also seems to have quit working. I'll try again.
Recovery could be anything from a riding lawn mower to spacecraft.good pics Tryin.
Hear is a truck that I am working on in spare time.Its a 1969 FWD 6x6.powerd by 6-V 53 detroit,5 speed tranny,3 speed auxiliary tranny.I plan to set it up with an oil field bed & fithwheel plate.I will use it for rigging and recovery.The winch is a 60,000 lb garwood that is driven by a tulsa 2 speed reversing pto mounted on the main tranny.It holds 350 feet of 3/4 cable.I like the old mechanical winches,on the hard pulls you can hear the cable talking as its wrapping on the drum.Stay in the cab an hang on for the ride.
nothing special- but here is my flatbed from when i was in recovery---well- at least it looks like the one i used to use- found this one on google. the second pic is of a small tug that i saw one of our neighboring fire departments using to recover some stuck equipment- they have now sold it to the kerens volunteer district- (not sure where that is?).
nice pics
Here are a couple of Pepe's towing (Los Angeles CA) helping us load some machines heading to the scrapyard in Riverside,CA
Thats a nice looking pete.They can do alot with a rotator.Good pics.
Yeah nice truck wish we could keep our trucks that clean Here are a couple of old ones they help us upright a 330 someone flipped in Santa Monica CA
thats a cardinal sin of recovery. NEVER EVER Tie the front of your wrecker off when winching. IM amazed that winch line didnt snap and kill someone. That guy is a fatality waiting to happen. your dozer would have been much better served as a dead man. 3+ parts of line one terminated at your dozer would have been much smarter. Also most people don't know if you dump a 5 LB bag of sugar in a mixer drum it will keep the concrete from setting up and saving the drum. I have heard that 4 liters of coke will do the same thing also. But i know the sugar works as a fact i have seen with my own eyes.
:slomo I agree not to tie off the front of the truck. I have seen the winch line on a oilfield tandem break due to that and it got western real quick. The sugar trick works very good. We use it when we cement surface casing to retard the cement. A 50 lb sack will treat 50-60 bbls of cement. They suck it up and haul it off in a tank truck.:slomo
I thought the same thing.All the heavy equipment sitting around with no use of "dead men".I wont Tie off my kenworth,But sometimes I tie off the gmc wrecker in some winch outs.The gmc has the factory tripple frame and heavy push bumper to tie off to.You still have to use judgment on any job.I'll keep the coke & sugar trick in mined on the concrete.I never herd of that before.
Dumb question just to be sure I understand By tie-ing the front of the winch truck to something you do not know how much strain you are putting on your winch? You expect your truck to move before your line breaks? Why is it better to use another machine as a dead man? Good to know somebody has witnessed the sugar trick, I have heard of it but was not sure if it was fact or urban myth
well the trucks chassis was never meant to take the strain like that. by tieing off both ends your now trying to pull the truck apart in ways it was never designed to be pulled. If a winch line breaks and doesn't kill someone thats a best case scenario. Heres the TEXT BOOK example what of can happen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqCy7ZxVdgI&feature=related By using Multiple parts of line you can get MUCH greater pull on the stuck vehicle without overloading your winch cable. IT is much easier to overload your rigging so you have to make sure your using a chain and attachment rated for load being placed on it. using multiple parts of line with one anchored to a "dead man" allows the force of winching to be spread out over two anchors and letting the wrecker stand still while all the winching force is being put into the stuck vehicle. Heres a fascinating read on vehicle recovery http://www.scribd.com/doc/9572722/us-army-driving-manual-vehicle-recovery-ch22
DOH! I didnt think about the possibility of snapping the tow truck in half :Banghead Thanks for the links, very informative. :drinkup
The two #1-2 was in Cleveland, Tennessee #3-4-5 was in Brockville, Ontario ( I did't run that truck :bouncegri ) Frenchy :canada
The third pic in the first post is a big company not too far from me. They have a ton of equipment, it seems like once a week you see another new truck. They have some really cool theme's that they have come up with, they had a new International painted to look like a Tonka toy. Cool thread, keep the pics commin!
Like I say, the cement companies boss man said "this is the man, hes gotten us out of worse situations before." So, all of us dirt dummies said, where ya want it, were going over here once we got ya the dozer where you wanted it. Maybe this is just me thinking out loud, but since the truck was trying to drive up hill when it got stuck, wouldnt it make sense to pull it out where it came from, where you know 1 the ground is good, and 2 you are sitting lower than the truck? :beatsme
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The yellow Kenworth is owned by a tow here in Banff.
Hi, The attached photos show a '40's-'50's Mack wrecker used by the former Chevrolet dealership in Fletcher, NC. Current owner unknown. I took the photos. Merry Christmas!
There are some fine looking units here. Keep them coming.
Having been the driver in a mixer in a situation pretty much identical to that(I backed off the right edge of a driveway, you could take the weight off the up hill wheels by grabbing the ladder at the fender and pushing) and being successfully extracted I can say TD, that you have hit the nail right on the head. The wrecker that came to get me had about a 2 foot wide strap that he chained to the frame on the right side of the drum, ran up and over the drum, then down to a snatch block on the base of a tree and to the wrecker, all single parts. The other line came off the boom and directly to the right side of the steer axle. Tromp down on the brakes, he'd pull the truck upright with the line over the drum, then pull with the other cable, I'd release my brakes and move forward, stop, repeat, pull the tree over on the mixer. Cut the tree off the cab of the mixer. He reset same cable configuration, but he moved the wrecker about 75 feet away down a parallel driveway and didn't use a snatch block and out came the mixer.
Yeah 95zIV, that's scary when they start leaning that bad with a top heavy truck loaded with concrete. It gets to the point where you have to get the weight off the lower side somehow before pulling on the front so it doesn't keep plowing in deeper & tip over. Sounds like you guys took care working together to get the job done:thumbsup. And yes.... When in doubt rig off the frame on winch out's. Sometimes when hauling a truck on the sling I still rig to the frame then bring the chain under the steering axil back to the sling hooks.
Some of those wreckers on the pages before look like they crashed through the craft aisle at Walmart with all the glitter paint, stickers and stenciling on them. The one with a dude's face painted on the side, what's the story with that?
Its all about getting your name to stick in someones head, marketing mainly. Any way to get your image in their heads when it all hits the fan and they need a bail out ASAP is what its about