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OT: unsecured steel plates sever truck cab when truck stopped at light

Spud

Diamond
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Location
Brookfield, Wisconsin
China. Video 37 seconds long so no need to explain.



On the freeway about 2 hours ago I saw a semi carrying about a dozen or so I-beams. The load was secured but there was no headache rack. I was going at around 60-65mpg and the truck overtook me. In an emergency stop from 65-70 mph I wondered if the load would go crashing through the cab. Surprised there is no DOT regulation on headache racks. I did see other semis, some with headache racks on the tractor unit and some with headache rack intergral to the flatbed trailer.

Here is a story from Angola Indiana where sadly the truck driver died when the steel beams he was transporting crashed through the cab .

 
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Beams, pipe, anything of that nature will do it. This is not uncommon. I can recall a couple of years back in the 70's when it seemed that somebody was getting killed every month that way, although that was probably because of the radio programs I was listening to. Every professional driver should be aware of the hazard and secure their load. There are DOT regs about securing your load.

Frankly, I am not sure a headache rack is going to do much good if 25 tons of steel decides to keep moving at 60 miles an hour. At best, it ensures that the back of the cab moves up in a nice flat wall as it squishes you against the steering wheel. Keep the load on the trailer.
 
Frankly, I am not sure a headache rack is going to do much good if 25 tons of steel decides to keep moving at 60 miles an hour.

A lot of companies (flatbed and and logging) are putting the headache rack on the trailer instead of the cab of the truck. Keeping the logs from starting to slide is a lot easier than stopping them once they're moving.
 
I've always wondered about pickups and minivans with ladders on top held in place with a couple bungee cords. If one were to collide with me from behind the ladder would come right through the passenger compartment of my Honda Civic.
 
20ish or so years ago I saw an accident on I-35, a truck carrying one of those big concrete pre-cast bridge beams left the highway and hit an embankment, the beam kept moving, drove the cab and driver 6 to 8 feet into the hillside....

40ish years ago I was headed north on I-35 late at night, somewhere north of Waco I noticed what I thought was a semi, in the southbound lane, pulling into the median. Split second later I realized he was coming across the median, as he hit the northbound side he went airborne, I could see undercarriage of the truck:eek:. At that moment in time I was in the righthand lane, thinking he would carry on across I moved into left lane, he made it to rh shoulder then came swerving back into southbound lanes, split second before a head-on impact I swerved to the right just in time to see his trailer skidding on about a 45 degree angle towards me, tires smoking and howling in a way I'll never forget, as I cleared the trailer it rolled behind me scattering 2 big concrete septic tanks, the car behind me shot thru the gap between the tanks and trailer. Amazingly no one even got hurt that night. Careful out there, when shit goes wrong it happens fast.
 
I've always wondered about pickups and minivans with ladders on top held in place with a couple bungee cords. If one were to collide with me from behind the ladder would come right through the passenger compartment of my Honda Civic.
DOT requirements and whatnot usually only apply to emegency braking situations. In a collision you can pretty much expect any heavy load to get loose.

Some years ago in here semi loaded with paper rolls collided with a bus. Paper rolls rolled trough the bus leaving 22 dead and 14 injured.
 
Just after I built the lumber rack on my truck I bought about 400 pounds of various steel tubing from my job. I think I was 17 at the time. Not knowing better, I strapped it with a few harbor freight straps, laid out flat and not bundled. I asked the guys who helped me load it and they checked and said it wasn't going anywhere.

Pulling onto the highway I saw it all sliding back, and I hit the brakes enough to slide it forward and then coast to the side of the road, but from there I was stuck. There was no way to gently drive through and out of that intersection, so I had to walk back to work, find my boss, who called a few of her friends and one of them met me there and helped me strap it correctly.

Ever since that I use three or four 3000 pound working load straps wrapped around the bundle. I did a few tests, spinning the tires and locking them up and got no movement at all, and now I'm confident nothing I ever strap will move.

But seeing how other people strap things I'm not sure how I tend to be so unlucky. I had an 800 pound pallet of metal strapped four inches from the front of the truck bed and it hit so hard at the yellow light it dented the bed forward and I thought I got rear ended. People usually make fun of me for strapping a pallet in a pickup bed at all.
 
I've recently found youtube vids of Bobby Goodson of "Swamp Loggers" and watched a lot of them.

One episode one of his haul trucks had a wreck and the logs slid right up into the cab, just missing one of his drivers.

After that he decided that racks behind the cab don't do any good... ordered all trailers were going to be equipped with a rack~ to prevent the wood from getting a run at the cab.

Anyhow.... as good as this stuff is secured.... we often have loads of steel like this slid all out of position~ slipping right out of those big bands. They'll set the car out to the RIP track and have a contractor come in with some equipment to slide it all back into place and resecure.

This stuff is 3½ thick.5......-crop.jpg
 
I've always wondered about pickups and minivans with ladders on top held in place with a couple bungee cords. If one were to collide with me from behind the ladder would come right through the passenger compartment of my Honda Civic.

Ladder will probably fly right over you in the civic and go through the back window of the car in front of you. :rolleyes5:



Here is a vid of a shifted load that did not go into the cab being reset on the side of the road. It looks like the load was on top of two high 4x4 stickers and they rolled flat under braking.
Same guy has other good shift vids also, it is easy to get sucked into watching his vids.

 
In oz, we have a Load Restraint Guide booklet that tells a driver how to tie a load. It’s nearly 300 pages, but the short story is .8 G forward and .5 g
g in other directions.
It’s worth a read. It has a heap of laws attached to it
The mermaids flog it to death.
 
Just after I built the lumber rack on my truck I bought about 400 pounds of various steel tubing from my job. I think I was 17 at the time. Not knowing better, I strapped it with a few harbor freight straps, laid out flat and not bundled. I asked the guys who helped me load it and they checked and said it wasn't going anywhere.

Pulling onto the highway I saw it all sliding back, and I hit the brakes enough to slide it forward and then coast to the side of the road, but from there I was stuck. There was no way to gently drive through and out of that intersection, so I had to walk back to work, find my boss, who called a few of her friends and one of them met me there and helped me strap it correctly.

Ever since that I use three or four 3000 pound working load straps wrapped around the bundle. I did a few tests, spinning the tires and locking them up and got no movement at all, and now I'm confident nothing I ever strap will move.

But seeing how other people strap things I'm not sure how I tend to be so unlucky. I had an 800 pound pallet of metal strapped four inches from the front of the truck bed and it hit so hard at the yellow light it dented the bed forward and I thought I got rear ended. People usually make fun of me for strapping a pallet in a pickup bed at all.



I always overdo it with the ratchet straps, using way more than needed. The last 2 large items I transported was a 3900lb lathe and a 4400lb mill. A lot of riggers and people purchasing such machinery would just set it down on wood blocks and strap it. I am skittish about just using wood blocks, so I built a custom skid for the lathe , screwed down blocks of wood on all 4 sides of the lathe so it wouldn't move any which way on the skid and used about four 3000lb straps . For the mill I had a heavy duty pallet that I bolted the Mill to then strapped everything down 6 ways from Sunday.
 
I've recently found youtube vids of Bobby Goodson of "Swamp Loggers" and watched a lot of them.

One episode one of his haul trucks had a wreck and the logs slid right up into the cab, just missing one of his drivers.

After that he decided that racks behind the cab don't do any good... ordered all trailers were going to be equipped with a rack~ to prevent the wood from getting a run at the cab.

Anyhow.... as good as this stuff is secured.... we often have loads of steel like this slid all out of position~ slipping right out of those big bands. They'll set the car out to the RIP track and have a contractor come in with some equipment to slide it all back into place and resecure.

This stuff is 3½ thick.View attachment 312426


Seen all or nearly all of the Swamp Loggers episodes. It was the only decent logging 'reality tv' show . The other show "AxMen" was just unbearable after the first season , far too much contrived situations and sensationalism.
 
When I was a kid, we had a strange accident on the bridge between Phillipsburg, NJ and Easton PA. The approach to the bridge was kind of an S curve, and a truck carrying hanging sides of beef ran up on the bridge too quickly. The sides started swinging and about half way across the bridge the momentum of their swing knocked the truck into the bridge structure, killing the driver.
 
I worked for a structural steel fabrication shop, when a trailer would come in to get loaded up with steel the first thing the owner looked at was the rigging the trailer had. If there was nylon straps and no chains for rigging the trailer went right out the door just as empty as it came in. The owner was an advocate on chains for binding loads, he was an old civil/structural engineer and he explained about how important chain tension was in proper loading and binding. I never would have thought about some of the points he brought up when I was younger, but now I use chains when possible and add break straps to loads that chains are not practical for.
 
about 15 years ago, I was sitting in the back end of traffic, when a gas tanker tractor trailer came through, he apparently was not paying attention ... He never hit the brakes. In order to avoid the cars in his way, he wound up driving onto the embankment on the right side. I don't know how he didn't roll over as it was steep as anything. He took out a lot of smaller sapplings. He drove back down the embankment and safely stopped on the shoulder. When I say I don't know how he didn't roll, I think the hill was better than 45 degrees, so not sure how he didn't roll....

I nearly shit a brick right there. I should have died in a blaze of fire.... We were all lucky.

I know it's not heavy load like you were talking about, but it was just as scarry.
 








 
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