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How not to right a tipped semi


sputnik

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Sputzie... that is a good one... ! Was busy the last bit, we did two nice recoveries this month. This one was a loaded refrigerated trailer that had 38,000# in the box. Pulled over on our highways... not a good ideer. We uprighted it on a two lane highway, with our 45 ton NRC long stick wrecker ( on a Western Star chassis ) and our NRC quick swap equipped International. No airbags like they were using in that video... they work well in parking lots... not in rock cuts.

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A super long wrecker is useless up here in NW Ontario, no place to turn a truck like the one in the video around, mind you if it is a rotator, you can work off the side, if you have enough hardwood to block the outriggers... here we have no real shoulders to speak of. Not to mention having to drive 50 kms to turn around is not in the best interest of doing business and making money.

Neither is flopping a $ 375,000 wrecker on it's side running... OUCH. No substitute for both training and common sense.

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Q: How would you upright a dry van trailer that has 48,000 pounds sitting on a wall, with a roof that looks like this... ?

A: You don't even try. It slid 200 feet, grinding all the rivets off the side holding the wall panels to the ribs, plus the load slammed violently into the wall and roof. Structurally it won't support any weight. You unload it. The wall was never designed to take weight ( especially in a dry van ), but a refrigerated trailer has urethane foamed in place, and is a LOT stronger, meaning the wall can withstand some abuse.

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We unloaded it with a wheel loader, large reinforced bags of feed sitting on pallets, weighing in at a ton each. Using chains we pulled each bag out one by one, uprighted it and carried it down the road 300 feet to our trailer for recovery. Setting each bag on a pallet, we then moved them down the length of our trailer with a pallet jack.

Every job is different, but you have to be creative and adapt.

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