This past friday I was part of, what could have been, a major mess. As usual I head to work in the morning and as a group, we head off in the advised vehicles. The one I happened to be travelling in consisted of three other co-workers, an extended cab 04 Ford Duly with a short tri axle trailor(pintle hitch type) and a skidsteer type rock crawler on top. The trailer and crawler weighs in well over 15 000lbs.

As we drive off on our hour and a half drive I figure I'll take a bit of a nap. I wake up to 'Hold on to her!' . Turns out we're heading down an incline, on the four laner, doing 110kms/hr with the rear of the truck shimming from side to side. More fuel was tried, nothing... brake was tried, nothing. All we knew was we were in for a ride. As we neared the bottom of the hill, she jackknifed towards the median, bringing trailer and all a few feet from the guardrail and the seemingly steep bank. Our truck has almost completely done a 180 with no traffic in site . After checking the air and our pants we made it to the crossover in the median.

Once out of the truck we checked everything over. The V'd neck of the trailer somehow bypassed the rear fender of the truck and the upper front rail of the trailer ended up in the rear wheel well. She couldn't have gone much further without slicing a tire.

After all that, I didn't know what to think. However I did make it clear to the boss that, on the way home, I was NOT travelling in that thing again. Needless to say, I sat on a parts box in our not to far away float truck. Made it home safe and was sure glad nothing worse came of it.

*crosses off yet another one of my nine lives*



Mike

 

Wow... Glad you are ok, and no one else was injured. Did they figure out what was wrong with the Ford?

 

EEEEEKKK !!!! Not fun to wake up to that stuff happening. Glad noone was hurt. What did you use to get the stain out of your shorts ??

PISTOL

 

I think he was advised via pm to use the brush chaikwa uses on the t bow/ coffee pot for rinsing.........

 

You just leave my poor little brush outta this!

chaikwa.

 

Seemingly enough it has happened once before... about 10 kms down the exact same highway . The owner/boss said he fixed something to do with the front end of the truck prior to this little incident but after experiencing it all first hand, it was definately a bad weight shift. There's not enough weight situated on the truck. We figure the trailer itself it too short for 3 axles and with the pintle hitch it allowed for that crazy side to side movement.

 

Sadly I had to wait it all out... . Worst part was, the boss was more worried about stained seats than anything

 

What exactly were you towing on that trailer?

 

Here's a picture of the rig(Rayco). I guess with the forestry head, it's 15 000lbs for the Crawler alone.

 

Sometimes speed limits work against you, depending on who's doing the driving. Speed limit pulling a trailer may be 70 mph, so driver automatically takes it up to 70 because that's the 'Safe Limit'. Right, and the highway engineers and legislators that assign speed limits know what you're going to be hauiling, with what, on a particular day? I'd be willing to bet this close call wouldn't have happened at a lower speed for the towing vehicle. I see many trailers wig-wagging down the interstates simply becase they are going too fast for the load and truck/trailer combo. Glad you came out the other side in your clothes, instead of a body bag.....

 

Speed was also a factor as well. About 90-100kms/hr seems to be a good opperating zone for this setup so we've come to figure. Definately a pick-me-up at 8:30 in the morning

 

I will agree with the speed factor.

Also, I have said it before, and I will say it again, bumper-hitch trailers are death-traps.

 

I disagree with this statement totally!!

Bumper-hitch trailers that are improperly setup and loaded are potential death traps. There are just as many idiots out the pulling 5th wheels and goosenecks that are just as overloaded or improperly setup.

Just because you have a gooseneck doesn't mean you can haul a backhoe or such with a 1/2 or 3/4 ton truck. See that all the time around here.

Jeff

 

Im gonna have to go with homestead on this one. When properly setup, maintained, load secured, and not over weight bumper pull trailers are fine.

 

You don't have to be so picky with a gooseneck; just load her and go, no sway, no foolishness.