Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

“Your mission…should you decide to accept it…is to transport this:

To another location….far….far….away.

Relevant info – height, width, length, will all be “legal” it will, however be somewhat heavy. The above item (a Pallet Load System Truck for the National Guard) weighs somewhere around 49,000 pounds.

This load will vanish in a short time if you don’t take it.” (shortage of freight right now… and the competition is fierce).

Ok. Gotcha.

I accept the load and drive a long ways to get it.

First to load it.

All I gotta do in this case is drop the neck and get outa the way. The nice army fellers back it on for me. This is a good thing. Although I’m fascinated by this type of machine, and I”M SURE I can drive one (pant!!!…pant!!!), making one little tiny boo-boo while loading it would be bad. Best to let the experts do it.

and….

………all I’ve got to do is hook up and tie down.

Simple Huh?

Not so simple….as I was informed one day(in a different but similar situation) along side the road by a nice young feller wearing a uniform.

Securing a load so that it will stay on the trailer is one thing. Conforming to the rules is something else. They are NOT the same. The rules are complicated….getting more so every day….and seem to have little to do with reality. (grumble….guv bureaucrats….too much time on their hands…..mumble….grumble).

THAT fine day I was introduced to the intricacies of indirect and direct tie down.The old standards of working load limits, tensile strength and “weakest link”….which had stood us well for decades…if not centuries apparently were no longer good enough.

About now you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about. Everyone knows truck drivers are stupid, don’t have to know anything…and just sit there holding the wheel all day, right. Especially them dirty flatbedders. What’s all this technical stuff?

Well it’s stuff you gotta know to pull flat beds. It’s doubly important with oversize/overweight. It IS really technical and it takes up many, many pages in the DOT hand book. It’s so confusing that even many of the state DOT guys don’t understand it. Regardless, we have to deal with it.

So listen up.

First off. “The Rule says” that I must have at least half the weight of the load in tie down strength.

This refers to the “hold down” power of my securement devices. Chains, straps, binders and what not. Every chain has a number stamped on it. That number is the “working load limit”. That means how much it’s ALLOWED to hold down…not how much it CAN. Working load limit is generally half of the rated tensile strength of the chain and that in turn is about half of the breaking strength. So we’re talking serious redundancy here.

And that’s good. Having a load scatter all over the highway can ruin your whole day.

But to get back to what I was talking about. “Half the weight of the load” in this case means about 25,000 worth of chain tension. Since I have half inch securement equipment , rated at 11,000 lbs WLL that’d mean two and a half chains. (half a chain?)

Don’t be silly.

Furthermore “The Rule” further goes into a lot of hoopla and la-de-da about multiple gee forces in the front-rear/sideways directions and fractions there-of.

Once again, don’t be silly, common sense means “tie the sucker down so it won’t fall off”.

So I did. Here’s how it’s done.

First off “Bigger is Better” when it comes to chains…up to a point. That point is half-inch. The reason being that any bigger is too big too work with, they’re heavy too. The places to tie to on the trailer are too small and half inch is already stronger that the trailer connection points. So half inch it is.

There she be loaded and tied down. There are chains front, rear, and sides. Let’s take a closer look

In the rear. Two Half inch chains and binders cross chained so the load can’t go sideways in either direction and at angle to the rear so the load can’t go forward when I hit the brakes.

The chains have grab hooks on the trailer side

And are tied thru a “D-ring” attached to the trailer. These D-rings are rated at over 10,000 lbs. ( If I had my way I’d have nothing but “D-rings” on the trailer and lots of them.) The hook on the chain is called a “grab” hook because it can grab onto the chain…connecting together as so.

On the load side.

I have “slip” hooks on the chain. This makes it really convenient as shown. They’re called “slip” hooks cause the chain will slip right thru it. It hooks to a D-ring really nice though. These are 5/8’s Slip Hooks on a half inch chain.

The reason I don’t have slip hooks altogether is this:

The front of the load and trailer. It’s a rub rail/stake pocket/ chain-spool system and I don’t like it. It’s barely adequate for half inch chains being really intended for small stuff like 3/8 and 5/16th of which I have none since it’s not strong enough. Notice I have the chain going through the rub rail, around a chain spool, back under the stake pocket and hooking too it? There’s reasons for this. The main reason is that the chain is stronger than the trailer connect spots. (which is why I prefer D-rings) If I have a wreck or something and the load comes off it’ll be because it ripped the stake pocket loose. I doubt that the chain will break. Since the trailer is weak I attach to it in several places thereby spreading the load. Attached in the above manner if for some reason the chain becomes slack the hook will NOT fall out.

Cross chained again but at a forward angle so the load doesn’t go sideways or backward under the neck-jerking acceleration that my truck is capable of. (….as if)

Ok. Four chains, each rated at 11,000 lb WLL, set at the appropriate angle so the load can’t go, forward, backwards, up or sideways while the truck is dodging maggie mini-van mommie as she cuts in front of me while talking on her cell phone, swatting at the kids in the back seat, applying make up and drinking coffee.

That should do it…right?

Wrong.

Here’s where the “Indirect/Direct” part comes in.

Now don’t laugh. The nice young officer beside the road that day told me this with a perfectly straight face. He was unimpressed by my disbelief.

A chain going from point “A” ( the load) to point “B” (the trailer) is only allowed to be counted as one HALF of the working load limit of the chain. Why? I purely don’t know. Stupid if you ask me.

So, count each of my chains as being about 5,000 lbs. four chains is about 20,000 and not quiet enough. Hence I did this on each side.

That’s a one inch shackle on the load going around two inches of steel on the load That’s Half inch chain and binder hooking to the trailer at two points. Guess what that’s rated at.

No…really…guess.

Five thousand pounds. If I had a shorter chain and it came straight down to the trailer, it too, would be rated at 5,000 lbs.

Yup. I couldn’t believe it either. But it’s true. Read the rules…and their amendments…and the comments on the amendments and the interpretations on the comments of the amendments to the rules. That’s what it says…plain as …..er……day.

Some cops know this.

So…now I have six chains at 5 thousand pounds…30,000 lbs “hold down” pulling every which way. I’m good to go.

See ya.