I-65 Bridge VS Excavator - both lost.

Wasn't an excavator but I saw an article yesterday about a oversize load that didn't quite fit under an overpass. The interesting part about that episode was that the trucker had got permits and his load was below the height limit on his permit.......

@Northern mb I'll be very surprised if that particular bridge was not one of these several cases of erroneous signages that seem to show up at times.. (says the opposite story I have noticed elsewhere where someone sent a 13ft6in truck into a 12ft10in signed bridge and easily cleared it no problem..uhh..)

CM1995 said: Looks like the Cat kept all it's cylinders.. Why on God's creation called Earth would ANYONE haul an excavator with the boom facing forward? Even to the rear **** happens like this I-65 crash but damn I don't even haul mini's with the boom forward. Click to expand... Why for sure! You load an excavator on a lowboy, meaning, that truck and trailer are off road, either a gravel lot or construction site, and your dumb azz has it cab forward. That's a good way to crack that laminated front windshield from a stone from the tires of the truck when it hits highway speed.

Terrible crash but, where did they get the cleanup operators from Home Depot? I mean what a dog and pony show. That could have been cleaned up in minutes.

@oarwhat hmm, regarding that - every time I see a major semi-disintegrated tractor in middle of highway on television show, after the then-hooked tractor has been moved to the shoulder any immediate hands including tow drivers themselves always seem to willingly take to any shovels or brooms they had handy to get at least one lane 'urgently' cleared for the police to let limited traffic through. This being both Highway Thru Hell and Heavy Rescue 401 episodes. And at least once it was a rolled lumber truck leaving a lot of loose planks in all lanes, guess who was nearby and happy to help out reopening one lane through the mess? A highway plow truck, talk about pushing wood out of the way instead of typical snow/slush!

oarwhat said: Terrible crash but, where did they get the cleanup operators from Home Depot? I mean what a dog and pony show. That could have been cleaned up in minutes. Click to expand... The clean up crew was already there working on the expansion and also work for the same company as the rig that hit the bridge. I imagine there was a lot of shock and CYA going on.

YT1300 said: @oarwhat hmm, regarding that - every time I see a major semi-disintegrated tractor in middle of highway on television show, after the then-hooked tractor has been moved to the shoulder any immediate hands including tow drivers themselves always seem to willingly take to any shovels or brooms they had handy to get at least one lane 'urgently' cleared for the police to let limited traffic through. This being both Highway Thru Hell and Heavy Rescue 401 episodes. And at least once it was a rolled lumber truck leaving a lot of loose planks in all lanes, guess who was nearby and happy to help out reopening one lane through the mess? A highway plow truck, talk about pushing wood out of the way instead of typical snow/slush! Click to expand... Yep we all know how "real" reality TV shows are. We have a Gold Rush thread somewhere in the basement here on HEF that's comical.

@CM1995 well to be honest these are real tow jobs, same can be said of a certain Ron Pratt on youtube as well. Even then I have watched a bit of misc types of A&E shows before and these ones seem to be scripted "life" aka fictional.

Wow! Those pics show how weak those structures are, pretty crazy. Maybe old excavator sticks and booms should be incorporated into those over passes for added strength.

You can buy a one owner excavator at Ritchie Brothers this fall.

I live in hays, that ex hitting the bridge was wild, a car was about to go over the bridge at the same time when it hit. The truck was around 100' past it, probably needs a new seat. Driver was off route, he was on a highway bypass and was supposed to go over the interstate and take a right after the interstate, go a two miles (parallel to the interstate) to the highway, and head north on the highway. He was confused or lost and thought that he would go two miles down i70 and then head north on the highway. There was a reason i70 was not on his route.

Pops52 said: It seems like it’s mostly excavators. Machines that can be lowered to legal height but aren’t. Guys pulling a lowbed that shouldn’t. Click to expand... The amount of outright idiot steering wheel holders I see hauling equipment is getting shocking One of the contract haulers completely took out a bridge using a big Peterson grinder…hauling it out of our main branch. We hire these morons too. And it’s not just really expensive dumb stuff like whacking bridges it’s a whole host of other stupidity. We had one drive a skid steer off the back of a beavertail without lowering the ramp then two weeks later he turned a scissor lift over The other week I watched one spend 3 straight hours trying to load a boom lift. He couldn’t figure it out. The era of the experienced professional driver is over.

JD955SC said: The era of the experienced professional driver is over. Click to expand... The era of experienced professional mechanic is too.

Truck Shop said: The era of experienced professional mechanic is too. Click to expand... The fault of that is purely the companies who employ them.

We had one low bed operator, forgot to chain a Mustang skid steer down. He had a Bomag roller and a small Leeboy grader and the Mustang. He was on the phone while he was doing it and somehow, just forgot. They were missing that Mustang for 2 weeks. It was coming from a Grind, Grade, Compact job, on some rich guys driveway, that was on a really big hill, with some good sized switch backs. The owner of the driveway called 2 weeks later and asked when they were coming to pick up the Mustang, rolled over, off one of the switch backs. Duh!

JD955SC said: The fault of that is purely the companies who employ them. Click to expand... Yup. Of course and it's driven mostly by us, the folks who hire out the lowest bidding trucking company to haul our stuff. Those companies can only afford to hire the lowest cost driver and you know what that means... Just saying that the haul bidding system is geared to employ the lowest cost driver to keep costs down so we need to find ways to avoid those pitfalls. For me, I have my short list of local owner-operators that I've used before and trust. I don't even ask for bids anymore, I just go straight to them and offer a job and happily pay for a good haul. Ain't worth the time or frustration to save a benjy or two on a critical load. Yeah, I know I'm small and I can get away with that but hopefully everyone has their shortlist too.

There is much more to it than just companies willing to hire with low standards.

This isn't specific to this thread, but as they often say with "save a penny, spend a dollar" as sometimes when you try to save too much you end up spending a lot more instead!

Hauling company’s new slogan is going to be, We have a bridge to sell!

Uhhhh hm I'm somehow not too surprised anymore after having seen way too many of these clips from the rather famous 11-then-12something high rail overpass channel on youtube. Even raising the rail bridge clearance a few inches still has not cured some "blind wheel holder" drivers! I think one of my non-truck favourite ones on the aforementioned channel tho would be that fifth wheel camper trailer which almost was ok except it bashed off its mid-roof a/c pod, I'm not so sure if such a roof hole can be economically repaired on these cheap thing but umm yeah..