This story is hardly worth telling if it weren't for the audience involved. (and isn't worth telling after reading Monster Truck's stories!
Names have been changed to protect the guilty...
I used to work for Untied Runtals, and at the time the manager was lacking in couple of key managerial qualities, such as temper, leadership, honesty, integrity, lawfulness, anger management, decency and caring. Other than that he was a nice guy (according to his friends)who sold copied Satellite Pay-Per-View (porn and sports basically) Decoder cards for really good prices.
His office was kinda like a second floor penthouse on the edge of our yard, and it had mirrored picture windows on 3 sides, so he was always watching. Sometimes when the sun was just right, it looked like there was a lidless Eye wreathed in flames looking down and seeing all. I always had a strange urge to wear a ring too... Anyway! we parked the fleet pretty much right under his office, facing away away from it.
There are many stories of hauling 12,000 pound+ rockwheel trenchers or ASV CTL's on a 9,000 pound rated surge-brake trailer up (and worse, down!) steep windy roads in the hills around the Whine Valley. He finally got tired of me Whining about it, and got a 35 foot gooseneck triple axle backhoe trailer with angle-iron ramps, and told me to use that for hauling all the small stuff, and quit using the low-deck equipment trailer. Now, loading 5k warehouse forklifts, Genie Lifts, Scissor lifts, small trenchers, double-drum rollers, etc on that trailer was interesting! They planked the ramps making them unsafe for one person to lift, and put a winch on the front to make it possible to load forklifts and scissor lifts. Oh, and the F550 it was pulled with had a 12 foot flatbed, which meant the welding shop next door installed the gooseneck hitch 2 feet behind the axle. I could get the front tires of the truck in the air if I had a heavy load! It was kinda fun driving through town bouncing them like some lowrider with hydraulics...
Wasn't very fun anywhere else though.
Oh, and they re-decked it with Pressure-treated 2x, which I then dropped a forklift through and they never fixed that hole which was right at the back of the trailer near the ramp.
And if I used the small trailer to haul a small load into a tight location where the big trailer (which was longer overall that our shorter hydraulic tail semi) wouldn't fit, I got yelled at.
So now that the stage is set.
I was hauling a full load on the hydraulic tail, had a 410 with no brakes on the neck, then I was going to load a Bobcat sweeper attachment tucked up under the 410, a stretch limo 8 seat golf cart, and then the bobcat crossways on the trailer.
So I cruise on up, get the sweeper in place, unhook and proceed to back off the trailer.
Now, you already know what happens next, but I'm gonna tell you anyway!
About the time my back wheels hit the ramp, I begin trying to kick myself.
If you have ever tried to kick yourself whilst sitting in a bobcat, you know that this takes some skill and flexibility. Which I didn't have. And then I decided I had better concentrate on the situation so I would be able to kick myself later in a better location, and avoid the Eye from having to kick me with some of it's wreathing flames.
I was lucky that I had taken the time to train with skid-steers previously, and had tested out balance points and experimented with ways to save wear on the front tires by putting distance between them and the abrasive ground, so I was able to apply that training to this situation.
So by now, my front tires have left the deck, but failed to establish firm contact with the ramp. In fact, they are reminding me of a cat trying to sniff out a morsel of food that you have just set on the floor for it. They check for the location of the Ripped Starling Chunks (what all cats actually desire cat food to be) in every direction but the one it is actually in.
In this case, I was restricting the 'Cats exploration options to the vertical plane only, which makes this story much less interesting for you.
So, I use the controls to keep the wheels below my sight line since I like being able to see where I youstawas, which means I am following a logarithmic curve between speed and distance traveled. And it's a long ramp, and I am getting closer to the Eye all the time.
I was lucky in that I had the engine revved up to Starling Ripping speed despite the fact I was maneuvering on a trailer, so I was able to keep my horizontal acceleration matched with my vertical acceleration until I hit the bottom of the ramp at Mach .000764543. My tail barely missed the pavement, and I settled her down with just a couple of minor bounces and then drove away as if nothing had happened.
I finished loading the trailer, trying not to look like I was walking funny, made a quick stop at the Walmart across the street for some planned clothing purchases, and then went on my way. I was lucky that the A/C intake for the bosses office was on the other side of the building. He might have wondered what the smell was, you know, from the revving engine... The customer later asked why there was a hole ripped out of the middle of the seat, and I told him there was a lot of vandalism in the area.
Since I seem to have tried to make up for quality with quantity, here is the condensed version for those that don't want to read the whole thing:
I backed a bobcat off of a trailer with no weight on the front under the mean bosses window, but was barely able to save it by speeding up as I went down the ramp. The End
There, aren't glad you didn't waste all that time reading the whole post? :Banghead:Banghead
More recently (a few of weeks ago) I was trying to load a large double drum roller with a bad hydrostatic tranny onto a wet tiltbed trailer with steel over the tires. It's the type where it takes a few seconds to ramp from stop to full power and back to stop, and it doesn't provide equal power to both drums, so the uphill one will spin while the downhill one takes a nap.
It's fun when you are giving it full power to climb the deck, the rear drum gets onto the deck and falls asleep, the front drum hits the steel plates providing all of 2 inches of contact, it starts working it's way sideways and won't stop turning. I went off over the corner of the trailer a couple of times before I gave up, got it as far on as I could and get it stopped, got on the backhoe and shoved it the rest of the way on. (I was alone).
I had some rubber mats, but they were too cold, hard and slick and would either just let it slip, or get kicked out.
Someday maybe I will work somewhere where they have the right equipment for the job! :drinkup
Ben~
