I know exactly what you mean.
I have rode bikes for many years and I know that riding a bike has
made me a much better driver all around. Personal suvivial tends to do
that for a person. When it is your butt on the line, you either become
a better driver or you run the very real risk of not surviving to be a
threat to others in the future.
If I ran the world ;), all would be drivers would be required to ride
motorcycles for several years BEFORE being allowed to drive a car. I
also think that all drivers should be required to pass both car and
motorcycle tests, including vision, written and actual driving parts
each time their license comes up for renewal. If you couldn't, well it
would be time to pull the license. A moving vehicle can kill just as
easily as a gun in the hands of an untrained person (the little old
lady). The roads would be much, much safer.
TMT
Jim Stewart wrote in message ...
Backlash wrote:
Quote....Oh...and don't trust little old ladies. ;)
Us bikers have been knowing that for years! G
I was going to add "drive like an old biker when
you have a mill in the back of your pickup"
If you're not an old biker, that means "drive
like you are paranoid that everyone is going
to run a red light and hit you"
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
om...
I mentioned the steel versus wood option because I am trying to decide
which way to go. Both options have their advantages.
Meanwhile Gary raises a very good point...don't rely on the machine's
friction to eliminate load shifting.
A story...
A few years ago I had a small Clausing mill in the back of my 1/2 ton
Ford pickup. I had it chained down very well from the top of the mill
to rings in the bed of the pickup. As I was driving down a busy street
in town (at the speed limit) approaching an intersection, a little old
lady decided that she had the right of way by running a red light.
Only because I applied several defensive driving moves (with great
screeching of tires as I drove around her) did this little old lady
live to see another day (exact words from policeman who witnessed the
event). By the time all the excitement had finished, the small
Clausing mill was still chained to my pickup bed...only now the mill
was sitting upside down. While the mill had suffered minimal damage,
the pickup bed had several large holes where the mill had punched
through during the evasive driving. Thankfully, the only hole in me
was in my billfold when repairing the damage later. All parties
involved were very, very lucky that day.
The lesson I learned...tie your load down as if your life depended on
it.
It does.
Oh...and don't trust little old ladies. ;)
TMT
Gary Coffman wrote in message
. ..
On 6 Jan 2004 06:18:06 -0800, (Dave Ficken) wrote:
Gary Coffman wrote in message
. ..
if I had a tilt bed, I think I'd
want a steel diamond plate floor. That'd allow things to slide on
and off easier. It's what the rollback wreckers have.
Actually, the roll back trucks used by (professional) Machinery Movers
have Wood decks, not diamond plate.
Jerr-Dan, the largest manufacturer of rollback wreckers, doesn't offer
a wood bed option. You get a choice of either steel or aluminum diamond
plate. If you put wood over the steel bed, you'd have a step to the shop
floor when you rolled the bed back equal to the thickness of the wood.
That would be a nuisance at best when winching the machine on or off.
My new (to me) trailer has a diamond plate deck. First thing I did was
put wood over it. It's real tough to keep a machine from sliding on a
steel deck. The concern is when hitting the brakes, not when sliding
down the ramp unloading. The machines slide nicely down the wood when
you tilt the deck.....nice and slow and easy, the way it ought to be.
To play devil's advocate for a moment, if you don't want the load to
move,
you tie it down so it can't. You don't depend on the friction of the bed
surface to hold it in place. Lance Wrecker has moved several machines
for me, and they have regular Jerr-Dan trucks with steel diamond plate
floors. None of the machines have shifted even an inch while they hauled
them, because they tied them down properly so that they couldn't move.
Example, when they moved my mill, they had chains going from the lifting
eye to the four corners of the bed, *and* they put a strap around the
base
and ran four more chains to the bed corners. That mill couldn't move top
or bottom while tied down that way. You *might* get by without the lower
set of chains on a wood floor, but I'd rather have them there anyway. So
it is really no more trouble to tie the load down properly on a steel
deck
than it is on a wooden one.
Note, I am not trying to claim that steel decks are better than wooden
ones for a machinery mover. I'm just saying that you shouldn't depend
on the friction characteristics of the deck material to hold your
machine
on the truck. If it is *possible* for it to move, there's at least some
chance it *will*. So tie it down so there isn't any possible way for it
to move short of something rated for the job breaking.
Gary