Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Getting The Show On The Road

What a great day!! While I was only feeling about 80% better, it was much better than yesterday. I think the extra rest helped more than anything, and I am still not sure what is/was wrong with me.

As I stated yesterday, today I had a long haul assignment. My transport was to take my truck with a 45 foot flatbed trailer to Marshfield, WI; about 130 miles one-way. When I got to Marshfield I was to pick up a load of trams (4 wheel carts that get towed by a pintle hook farm tractor). I was accompanied by 2 other trucks will 48 foot trailers with the same load assignment. Each of up was to pick-up 2 trams each.

As I wasn't feeling 100% yet, I felt it best to take the deadhead drive to pick-up the load and let John drive the loaded flatbed back. I think I would have been fine but better safe than sorry considering this is a REAL load.

The drive to Marshfield was uneventful, and it was a very pleasant drive and great weather for it. When we arrived at the pick-up point we decided to load the 2 van trailers first and do my flatbed truck last. And that is when the pain began!

Both of the van trailers are 48 feet long and 102" wide, the trams..........about 101 1/2" wide! And I am not even exaggerating! It took quite an effort to get the 2 van trailers loaded, and there is some "scars" on the inside of the trailers to tell the tale. All these trams really needed to be loaded on flatbeds only, and they lied to the school about just how wide they really were. Securment was a real pain in the vans as you couldn't really do much with the load as you had no room to work at all. So we helped with the blocking and bracing and just did the best we could. My turn was next....

My flatbed trailer is 45 feet long and 96" wide, which made loading these 101 1/2" wide trams precarious to say the least (I will take my crappy digital camera with me to school tomorrow and take a few pics of the job we did and post them up tomorrow).
We had to get the loader to position each tram so the very center of the tires on both sides were perfectly centered on the sides of my flatbed. This left us with about 2 inches of the trams tires hanging over the sides! Not pretty, but we had to work with what we had. On top of that the trams really needed to be loaded on a 48' flatbed because we had the tongue of the end tram hanging off the end of the flatbed. This caused a minor problem as the front most wheels were lifted off the bed of the trailer. We braced up the front as best we could to get the wheels down as much as possible, but we just couldn't quite make it happen as we would have liked. After we got them loaded we had to nail down blocks to prevent the trams from moving forward or backwards as well as from side to side. If one of the trams shifted as much as 2 inches to either side, we were Majorly screwed, as these trams weight about 2,000 lbs each, if one side fell off the edge of the flatbed there was no hope of getting it back up there without a forklift or a crane.

After we got all the blocks in place and nailed down (not an easy task as it would seem), we then used ratchet style cargo straps to secure the trams by running the straps around the axles. 1 cargo strap per axle each pulling opposite directions. We also strapped down the end of the last tram (the end thats wheels is off the flatbed) as tight as we could. That was all we could do, and so we headed on back to school.

The trip back was uneventful. We stopped twice to check out load securments and everything was just as it was when we left. Only one of the cargo straps was a bit loose so we ratcheted it down again good and tight. Our second stop was at a truck stop to check our loads and grab a bite to eat, one of the van trailers had a problem. The tram closest to the doors had broken free for the front blocks securing it and had to be re-nailed down and secured. When we got back to school with our loads and started to back our flatbed up, we heard the most awful sound coming from the rear most axle. It sounded like the brakes were not totally releasing and were rubbing a bit. Not enough to lock up the wheels or anything, but enough to heat up the rims to the point you couldn't touch it without getting burned. Not good, so we called over one of the mechanics and had it put into the shop to get checked out and repaired. It has to get repaired tonight as we have to deliver all the freight from yesterday and today to Sheboygan tomorrow. All 7 trucks are going to delivering, so it will be an interesting day tomorrow as well.

After dealing with all the hassles in bracing and blocking and strapping of those trams on the flatbed, I am not sure I would ever want to pull flatbed. But, who knows, it was allot of work, and I had 5 other people there to help me secure it, I can't see it going nearly as well if it were just me, myself, and I. All in all it took us 2 1/2 hrs to load and secure 6 trams, 2 in each truck with all of us helping each other. It would have taken at least that long for us to do it by ourselves loading and securing 1 truck.

So tomorrow it is off to make delivery in Sheboygan, and I will tell you all about those adventures and post some pics of this experience. I think it was an awesome experience no matter what. We had a real load to pick-up, had to deal with and work with the customer, work on load securement, and manage our load. Lots of good stuff to learn, and tomorrow will be another great opportunity as well.

Goodnight!

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