If you're gonna mess something up......

Do something that leaves people scratching their heads wondering how you did it in the first place.


So I get to the job site first thing this morning to load out a little Hitachi 135 excavator. I detach, get out all my chains and binders, and hoof it over to the excavator on the other side of the job.

Battery's dead, someone left the ignition in the ON position. One of the foremen show up and we try and jump it off his crew truck, no dice. I learned how to spot a 24V system today! We'll need two trucks for this!

Grab the lowboy tractor, raise the gooseneck as high as she'd go, so I wouldn't catch any manhole rings on the asphalt base.

We get the excavator started, I start driving back to the rest of my trailer, make a left turn going maybe 10mph and the gooseneck slides right off the tractor frame and takes the fender with it.

I shoot the photo above to my boss and give him a call. "How in the f#@$ did you do that?"

It ended up being okay in the end, we took off the fender, use the excavator to put the gooseneck back on the frame, and I roll on.. after a wizz quiz of course...

My pride is a little hurt, but I figure that if this is the worst thing that I've done in two years of driving, I'm doing okay.

Anyone do something like this before?

It Happens...

I like what it says in your rear window.

Yep, plenty of little mishaps over the last 30years or so. I have learned a lot of ways to not do somethings. lo.l I have drove around with the neck of my trailer like that before, I will definitely keep your picture in mind if I do it again.

Pulled into the yard one day with the hydraulics detach unload hook back up after and get ready to drop the trailer pull the pin and pull out to let the trailer down and I realised the at the time the glad hands snapped off it was the hydraulic not the mechanical detach so the ramps didn't do squat

At least you owned it and are able to laugh

and I thought I was seeing some type of new side boom mower attached to a truck !!!!! LOL

AzIron said:

I realised the at the time the glad hands snapped

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I pulled the hoses off a number if times, getting in a hurry while splitting the trailer.
Got pretty good a fixing them in the field.
Quick and dirty...nobody needed to know. But the lines got a little shorter by each mistake.

Truck Shop said:

I like what it says in your rear window.

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I have mixed feelings about that sticker, but I feel like it'd be bad luck to remove it. Kinda like changing the name of a ship, it wouldn't feel right.

Friend of mine paid to have a 210 Kobelco moved. He came along and saw his hoe sitting up right in the median of the interstate, still chained to the deck, with the grass on fire around it. He put out the fire and drove about 5 miles to his exit, then another couple of miles, then saw the tractor sitting on the jobsite with the neck on the frame. The driver hadn't noticed until he looked in the mirror coming in the gate!!

After that, he paid more to have my trucks move him!

mitch504 said:

Friend of mine paid to have a 210 Kobelco moved. He came along and saw his hoe sitting up right in the median of the interstate, still chained to the deck, with the grass on fire around it. He put out the fire and drove about 5 miles to his exit, then another couple of miles, then saw the tractor sitting on the jobsite with the neck on the frame. The driver hadn't noticed until he looked in the mirror coming in the gate!!

After that, he paid more to have my trucks move him!

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Hard to believe, but so are the videos of guys hitting a bridge with their end dump 36' in the air...………..

Years ago when I worked for a towing repair shop I cleaned up a wreck-on the side of the sleeper it said {Flirting with Disaster} and that driver did.

There was garbage truck driver that was having problems with the top of the box not closing after dumping. He failed to check and smoked a bridge at about 80kmh. He was pretty shaken up. Friend of mine was first one to come along after it happened and called 911. Worst was quite years ago. One of the power plants here with a couple draglines was getting 4 D10's delivered. 3 were delivered without any problems. 4th one someone must have been in a hurry. Loaded machine on trailer and off the driver went. Came to an abrupt stop hitting a bridge. The D10 flattened the truck and trailer out and was stuck at a 45 deg. angle under the bridge. You could see things way out of alignment on the Cat. Driver was really shaken up and in shock. He also hit the bridge doing about 80kmh. Talked to a mechanic who said the D10 was a right off. Made the front page of the paper... They loaded it up with the ripper tooth upside down and forget to lower the ripper after they loaded it.

In 1991, I bought a lightly used D8L dozer from a local dealer. It had to be delivered to us from about 600 miles away. The deal was, we paid for it when it was delivered to us. Well, I got a call from the salesman a day before the delivery date. It seems like the truck driver failed to clear a bridge on a nearby interstate highway, even though he was permitted for the route. It laid the cab back over the fuel tank, and also ruined the roofmount A/C system. When I called our VP of production I figured I was really going to get a chewing out. All he asked me was "Who currently owns it?". When I told him they still owned it, he never said anything else to me. As it turned out, we got the dozer a few weeks late, but with a new cab, new fuel tank, and new A/C unit. Worked out ok for us in the long run.