Flatbed Variety

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Delivered a small load of walls today of course they had to be 12' wide

Where is everyone? Gets a little cold and you guys and gals run for the cab? I think Lil Sister should be on her own truck by now. been slow for me here but I still get a few days in a week. It will pick up again in March though.

Myself and one other driver spent the last 2 days moving a crushing plant and all the associated crap that goes with it. Of the 12 loads that I moved, only 1 was legal size and there were only 2 that I did not need the light bar for. Man do I want a wireless one.

This is a feeder and a screen. We also moved a cone, jaw, fuel tanker, generator and 2 dry vans. Here is conveyor row ranging from 60-80' long

Where is everyone? Gets a little cold and you guys and gals run for the cab? I think Lil Sister should be on her own truck by now. been slow for me here but I still get a few days in a week. It will pick up again in March though.

I'm here! I check this thread every time it pops up, and I've been collecting a few pics, but I haven't gotten around to posting them. Here's some:

A load of steel coils loaded "eyes to the sky" style. I threw 2 chains over each stack in an "X" pattern, using metal edge protectors to prevent damage to the steel. Then I threw a strap over the middle for good measure, using pieces of old straps placed underneath the edges to protect it from tearing. And then I had to tarp the whole thing:

I delivered some wooden fence poles to a big commercial orchard in Oregon a few weeks ago. I had to drive about a mile through this snowy field to position the truck for unloading:

Here's a pic I took when I was driving in Canada and ran out of windshield washer fluid in my reservoir. It's absolutely UNREAL the amount of salt they use on the roads up there! I was literally spraying my windshield every 20-30 seconds. When I finally ran out, I had to pull over almost immediately and refill it. This is what my windshield looked like:

I was unloading a Challenger hoist to this car dealership (not my most recent Challenger load that I just finished today, this was about a month ago). I parked on the street and they had this dinky little forklift thing which couldn't lift the hoist. Every time they tried, the rear wheels would come off the ground. I ended up parking on the opposite side of the street so the incline was reversed, but they still had to disassemble the bundle and remove it in pieces:

The funniest part was that after they got it off, they couldn't fit it through their door! They had to rest one end on a rolling jack and use the forks to lift the other end, and kind of drag it inside:

And here's just a simple load of asphalt buckets (easiest tarp job I've ever had!):

I haven't taken many pics of recent loads, mainly because it's been so cold that I don't even want to spend an extra second outside to take a pic. But if I come across any unique loads I'll try to remember to grab a quick shot if I can. I'm in Oregon again, just loading some regular old plywood tomorrow morning in Roseburg. Boring.

Nice... On your snap binders, is there a reason that you pulled the handle up instead of down? Chances are greater for the binder to completely loosen with gravity helping the handle come down. I figure it was because you were probably on the trailer at the time. I know they can be hard to reach on a flatbed if you are vertically challenged like me. That is the reason our flatbeds have a 2' ladder in the side box so we can reach those.

Not trying to say it is wrong because you obviously got the load there safely, it just looked odd to me.

Nice... On your snap binders, is there a reason that you pulled the handle up instead of down? Chances are greater for the binder to completely loosen with gravity helping the handle come down. I figure it was because you were probably on the trailer at the time. I know they can be hard to reach on a flatbed if you are vertically challenged like me. That is the reason our flatbeds have a 2' ladder in the side box so we can reach those.

Not trying to say it is wrong because you obviously got the load there safely, it just looked odd to me.

Yeah it was pretty much just an angle issue. I was standing on the load and it was much easier to pull them up than push them down, especially considering I was trying to get those chains as tight as possible.

Also, the pics don't show it, but I did go back through before tarping and wrap bungees around the binder handles to help keep them locked down.

Ok, Pat, I'll admit there was one picture of offloading plywood at a farm in Iowa that I should've taken but didn't because I was tired after folding up frozen tarps and rolling frozen straps. But other than that, it's just been forgetfulness.

My current load is foam with three stops. The first stop was at a home site in beautiful Divide, Colorado, where some young people with Americorps are building a house. They unloaded their bundles by carrying them away - no forklift required!

Here's the view from Ute Pass on US 24:

Here's the job site 9100 feet above sea level, a couple miles away from the pass:

Here's the remainder of the load after I dropped the second part of the load in Denver. This is going to Grand Junction, but not today since this cold or flu or whatever I have been fighting finally stopped me today. I'm just too sick to drive. It's expensive to get sick right before the weekend, dang it.

My loads are so predictable now days on this dedicated run that they are quite boring (every now and then I'll get something unusual, and I'm sure to show it to you guys). Here is a typical load for me, but I thought I might take the chance to throw in a tip for any new flat-bedders that are perusing this fun, but very lengthy thread.

Here is the tip: when tightening a strap down on a load, you don't want to have eight or ten feet of your excess strap wrapped around your winch. The main reason is that in so doing you are creating a good bit of slack in that strap that will develop and continually get worse as you drive down the road. The slack is actually in the windings on the winch. You may very well get it as tight as you can with your load bar, only to find that 150 miles down the road it is loosened up quite a bit. The vibrations of the road or the forces of a hard break will definitely loosen up a strap that is secured that way. What you want to do is pass the end of your strap all the way through the winch and then fold up the excess end so that as you tighten your winch it will pinch the excess strap up against the body of the trailer or the freight. You want to try and not wrap more than maybe three wraps at the most onto your winch - one or two is optimal, and you will very seldom need to tighten that winch again unless you're freight is something that compresses from the road vibrations.

Here is a couple of photos to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

Occasionally I'll use a hand winch like that second photo above. I do this when I need a winch in an area that is just above a tire. Putting the sliding rail mounted winch just above a tire is never a good idea, especially if there isn't a lot of room for the suspension to travel up and down. I've actually seen a guy lose a part of his flat-bed load because his tire came up and severed the strap which he had wound around his winch so much that it was protruding from the winch. After several times of the tire rubbing the strap it eventually gave way and then he found himself in some deep doo-doo!

Looking good Bud. I too forget to take photos on a lot of loads or just don't have the time to do it.

Hey Old School, another trick that I use when the load is tall and narrow where the strap will not be able to put tension on the rolled up strap. What I do when I run into this is roll up the strap just like I would when I put them away after tightening the winches. I then place the rolled up excess behind the strap on the deck and place a bungee through the center of what I rolled up. Then either end of the bungee around the strap and hooked to the rub rail.

It comes in more helpful when you have a load that is wider than the trailer. If I remember, the next time I will do one on purpose so that I can get a photo.

Got this load of rolled roofing in Little Rock this morning and drove way down to South Texas today, 603 miles away from the snow. I had to stop on the way to the shipper last night to buy some boards, and got up early to make V-boards to secure the load. The boards are 8' long and held 4" apart by two pieces of old strap stapled to them. (Next time I have to do this, I think I'll make them 6" apart so they lay a little flatter on the sides.)

An 8' V-board will cover the edges at the top and sides of three pallets, so with V-boards on both sides of the load, the pressure from the straps is distributed across all 9 or 12 rolls on those three pallets. This keeps them from bouncing loose and falling off the trailer. Some drivers just put one edge protector in the middle of the pallet and hope the tarp will hold everything in, but I know one driver who tried that and lost half a pallet on the highway.