is is unwise to drive my 2002 Skytrak 8042 the 2 miles back from my mechanics shop to save $300 for a lowboy tow??!! Thanks, Dietz
I have a customer with a New Holland and a JCB that drive them all over the place (4-5 miles) at wide open in high gear. They do eat tires doing that.
Welcome to the Forums Ird3! I drover my 1998 Gradall 534C about 15 miles back in the early 2000's from a job site back to my yard because I didn't want to pay the lowboy either. Still have the machine to this day and ran it on the yard. Just watch your temp. gauges and be careful. What did your mechanic say?
I'm driving two rental telehandlers about twice that far tomorrow, because I can't get the lowboys any closer. I worked on a powerhouse project years back, and I'm sure I drove over 4 miles a day in telehandlers back and forth to the laydown yards.
AFAIK, telehandlers such as jcb have T/C and 4 speeds, don't get so hot on the road and have good top speed. The other kind is like the Merlo we use, is hydrostatic with only a high and low speed, this generates a lot of heat to get any kind of road speed. Couple miles would be fine unless mountains, 10-20 miles sets the warning buzzers off pretty quickly and you end up pulled over a few times for quite a long while, waiting for them to go off.
in the UK telehandlers are the staple farm tool and are often driven long distances 10+ miles between farms with trailers fully loaded and a teenager driving with their foot to the floor, don't get many problems with them. This time of year this is a common sight around here
I would.. just watch out for the tires bouncing.. Good luck.
Good point, that skytrak has a torque converter, right? I'd use full throttle, or within a couple hundred RPM of full throttle, the torque converter will slip less that way, and that slippage is where most of the heat comes from.
It'll do just fine. Use your hazards/turn signals and pull over for faster moving traffic and you'll be doing better than 90% of the drivers you'll be sharing the road with.
Years ago, I moved some farm equipment about 50 miles … At first light Sunday morning. If I was on the same roads Monday at 8 am, I'd be on the afternoon TV news as a traffic accident. What type of roads ? Florida's minimum speed limit on Interstate Highways is 50 mph (80 km/h) in 70 mph zones. In 55 mph , and 65 mph urban interstate zones, the minimum is 40 mph (64 km/h). No minimum on other roads BUT... THEN THERE IS … Florida Title XXIII Chapter 316 STATE UNIFORM TRAFFIC CONTROL 316.183 (5) No person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law. Pulling over & Letting traffic pass you sounds like a good idea. skytrak Speed - Maximum Travel 19 mph / 30.58 km/h
I wager pretty much any telehandler drives way farther than 1 to 2 miles on any job site on any given work day.
Not a telehandler but many years ago I helped move a 988 87A Cat frontend loader from our shop to it's home quarry that is an 85 mile trip! Forget the reason but we had no truck with trailer available and they absolutely had to have the machine back at the quarry the next morning! Forget if we took I-81 or US-11 north. But either way we pulled in to the plant just a little too late as no-one was there and the gate was locked. Well as luck would have it I was using the service truck as the follow car and a quick look at the gate we saw that it was a simple job to unbolt a couple hinges and swing it open. Got it open pulled loader in by office and bolted gate back together and managed to get away before any cops showed up! Guess our boss got a phone call in the morning from plant super wondering how the loader got there, what with the gate being locked! I do have to think that long a drive was not good for the tires as they were very warm by the time we parked it.
My office overlooks the freeway. Back in the day when scrapers were THE earth moving machines before the excavators and off road trucks, it was not uncommon for a fleet of scrapers to run the expressway to a new job site. Pilot car or truck in the rear with the entire entourage running the right hand lane thru the metro area. I believe they can still get a permit to do it but seeing scrapers on a job sight is a pretty rare sight any more. One contractor near my house has 3 big Terex's that he used to use doing mass site grading with. I bet it has been well over 15 years since they have moved. The green paint is slowly turning to rust color, the weeds and brush are slowly taking over around them. I'm a member of an Industrial heritage Society and have though about asking for 1 to be donated for display.
I rented one a few years ago and drove it about 2 miles across town. Just be sure you check the steering switch. When I pulled out onto the road from the lot it was set to crab steer. That got kind of interesting. John
I know of a 992B that was roaded nearly 150 miles to save on dismantling to haul it. They took it easy for 3 days to get it home, they had pilot cars... but no permits. I still don't know how nobody ended up in jail.
Raildude, I worked a job long ago where a contractor from your area, L.W. Edison, flew operators up from Ft. Wayne, In., and roaded a fleet of TS-24s back down. That's how we did it back then.
LW Edison, wow, a name from the past. . I was 10-11 when they (earthwork) and LW Lamb (bridges) constructed I-196 thru town. I would spend all day every nice day on my bike exploring about 10 mile of new freeway under construction. I told my dad I wanted to run that equipment when I grew up. He said no, go get a civil engineering degree from MI Tech and you can tell them what to do. I did and do . Graduated in 1968 from MI Tech and now have worked for our local county highway for 47 years. I tell people I have never had a job. I get paid for what i did for fun all summer as a kid.
Just don’t touch steering selector valve while driving! And don’t ask me why I know that!
I will add to that if it's a Cat scraper just hope you don't lose the quill drive to the steering pump while you're barreling down the road..........
Road equipment?
Or have a contactor stick on an electric steer Wabco, but there's not many of those around anymore.
I have driven my Square Shooter across town about 4 or 5 miles (w a slow moving vehicle triangle attached to the rear). I have found a rearview mirror that I added to the driver's left and a parabolic mirror mounted to the right front invaluable - especially when roading. The other interesting thing is I thought going near full rpm would reduce torque converter heating but turns out going slower produced less temperature increase in the trans. When I first tried this, I would stop and make sure the brake was working and crib the wheel and snoop around the exterior looking and feeling for hot planetaries and u joints and use my thermo infrared "ray gun" for checking the area under the machine (dont like to crawl under machine while it is running LOL). The transmission was the highest temp and I looked in the manual and it does not have a locking torque .... Thinking the same as Delmer, but my experience is to go on any slope in 2nd gear and partial throttle in highest (3rd) gear otherwise. Could it be the heat from the trans plus the engine is starting to raise the temp in the radiator coolant and thus the trans must climb temp to transfer the heat to that hotter coolant? Ie heat removal is one value but heat input is another value? Am glad I had the temp gages maintained so I can observe this as dont wanna rebuild a trans! For my area I found lowbed service is around $300 for the 15 to 20 mile moves. My backhoe trailer doesnt have the capacity as the 8k reachlift weight is 25k.
I went to MI Tech and a kid down the hall was from Alanson MI not too far from the Mackinac Bridge. His folks sent him the Petoskey MI paper. Front page photo of one of those electric steer scrapers between the 2 towers (about 200 feet above the water) with the front axle over the rail and the bowl and rear axle keeping it from going over. They wouldn't let the operator out of the machine until he was tied off and wouldn't go down with it if it flipped over the rail. I think i would have passed out in shock.
This thread reminds me of when we were at Home Depot picking up some paver stone . Young 20 something feller made the sale on the product . Good guy . Paid for it at the counter and pulled the truck & trailer out back to load … He meets us at the paver stone out back an then tells me he can't load it as he don't have a " Fork lift License " . Tolled the young feller we was in a hurry and it would be OK for him to load the trailer and we would look the other way about the license . He did just fine after the Vote of Confidence for him . Probably be a future CEO for Home Depot after that talk . LOL !
Those WABCO operators are just wired up different . LMAO !
Dad and grandad had 4 B-70's with the 333A cans those were quite the handful to road around. In the late 70's I had one disconnect a driveline on a long downgrade, had another blow a hoist hose at full tilt boogie on a gravel road, but luckily I never had a steering contactor stick on the road. At least those machines had a steering wheel. I sure miss the sound of those 12V71's with the Nelson manifold mufflers.