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-Neil from Messick’s here.
Today we’re going to do a video to show you some of the pitfalls
that you can watch out for when hauling your tractor on a trailer.
The amount of improperly loaded and overloaded trailers that you’ll
see with equipment on it is shockingly and unfortunately common.
One thing’s that guys often do wrong when they’re sizing
their trailer to their equipment is not calculating the GVW properly.
Now the GVW is the gross vehicle weight
of the load that these tires are able to carry.
What guys will often do is buy say a 7,000-pound trailer
and assume that that trailer can haul 7,000 pounds, and that is not correct.
The amount of tractor that you could put on your trailer
is that 7000 pounds less the weight of the trailer itself.
The trailer is included in that capacity rating.
When you’re looking for a trailer and you’re sizing your tractor to trailer,
do remember that you need to include
the trailer itself and the weight of the GVW.
Seen a lot of unfortunate choices made on the places
that guys choose to run their straps or chains.
When you’re looking for places on your tractor in order to secure it,
it’s best to look for places around the chassis
and not anywhere up around the operator station.
Throwing a strap, say across the floorboards here,
or looping something up in around the grab handles is not a good idea.
These are really made for the operator and [chuckles]
not for, say, a chain or a strap that’s going to get ratcheted
down across it going across the arms in the hood, bad idea.
You’ll find all kinds of areas back here,
say behind your grill guard or over top of your loader torque tube
or around the back of the tractor that are really good places to put straps.
My personal favorite in every one of our trailers you’ll find a clevis,
you go ahead and put that clevis through the hitch itself
through the drawbar in the back and run a chain through that,
and that’s a great secure place in order to tie down your load.
A lot of guys will have concerns when it comes to straps versus chains.
I would echo that.
Whenever I haul my tractors around,
I always take the time to put chains on my machines.
Chains are harder to put on than what straps are because you need to use
a binder and stuff in order to tighten that up versus the ratchet,
which is very easy on your straps.
Concerns tend to come from one or two things.
For one, the breaking strength of these is lower than what chains are,
and if they go across any kind of sharp corner, they can tear and rip.
Speaking for our own dealership, one of our sales guys here about 10 days ago,
was hauling an RTD on a small trailer secured
down with two of these 3,000 pounds straps.
He crossed over top of a train track and when he did so,
the bottom of the trailer struck the rail.
When that happened, it literally ripped the hitch right out of the back
of his truck and the trailer stopped cold.
Now, when that had happened,
the RTV that was on the back of that trailer did not stay on.
It was secured with two of these straps well within
their load rating and properly put on the machine,
but these things ripped off and that machine came off
of the trailer at probably about 15 miles an hour or so.
So, keep in mind, do they work?
Yes. Are they legal? Sure,
but you talk to guys that run loads and running trucks and stuff all the time,
you’ll always find a lot more comfort with putting chains on your equipment.
The other thing you want to be mindful of is where
you center the load of your tractor on your trailer.
When pulling things on, you want to have a fair portion of the weight
up on your truck pushing down on the bumper,
things are going to tow better that way.
You can usually see that if you take a step
away from your truck and take a look.
You’ll see either the back end being lifted up or pushed down and ideally,
it should be pushed down and that suspension leveled out nicely.
One thing you want to watch though is when you back your tractor off,
be mindful of how your ton weight is changing.
I’ll tell you a personal story here of a mistake that I made one time.
With this actual truck and trailer,
I was parked on a slope in a customer’s driveway
and when I backed my tractor off the back of my trailer,
I went onto my ramps and lifted that ton weight up
and took enough weight off the back tires of my truck,
that the entire thing started sliding backwards and down the hill.
I was fortunate enough to be quick on the hydrostat and got off that thing
as fast as possible [chuckles]
and got the truck back down on the ground. Keep that in mind.
Your ton weight is not just set up for trailering the thing down the road,
think about what’s happening when you’re backing
that tractor off and what it might do to your truck.
I picked this specific truck, trailer,
and tractor for a reason and it’s to be able to show
you where you can run into problems with departure angles.
You can see here as I approach the ramps and the tractor starts to go up,
anything that I got hanging behind the tractor now
lowers down to the ground as I approach up the trailer.
You do need to be mindful on machines that you don’t
scrape your implements on the ground as you’re going up.
There are certain tractors, competitors in this space rhymes with green,
color of the grass, who will do things on this size tractor
that set the backhoe back further by say, putting a second seat back here,
and moving that hoe further back behind the machine.
When you do that kind of stuff, it really ruins your departure angle.
Now when you go up ramps like this,
you’re going find sometimes you can’t even get up on because your implement,
your backhoe is dragging on the ground.
Guys will find creative solutions when they run into those kinds of problems,
finding a hill or something to load on,
but obviously much nicer if you pay attention to the trailer
selection that you have versus the tractor that you’ve got,
and make sure you’re able to clear everything when you go up those ramps.
Another miscalculation that I see guys make are the way
that they calculate the weights for their tractors.
Oftentimes, the weight that you’re going to find on a website or a glossy
brochure is going to be a shipping weight for the machine,
not the machines operating wait.
When you go through, you need to remember
to add things like ballast that you may have
in your tires or even the attachments that are on the machine.
In the case of something like a BX23,
the weight of this is not going to include,
say the bucket on the backhoe, right?
Because those come in as separate pieces to the dealership.
They’re not included in the machine shipping weight
that you’ll find in the back of the brochure.
Make sure you go through and total up the weight of all those doodads,
the fuel that’s in the machine, any ballasts that’s in the tires,
cutting edges, implements that you may have hanging on to the machine.
All of that stuff should be totaled up into the weight
of the load that you’ve got sitting on your trailer.
That’s a couple of tips that I’d have for guys
that are hauling around their tractors.
I know many of you have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff,
probably a lot more than I do.
If you’ve got any interesting stories or problems that
you’ve had when it comes to hauling equipment around,
leave them down in the comments below.
It really helps all of us learn some new things to watch out
for and ways to be more safe with our tractors and equipment.
If we could help you with any part sales and service needs that you have,
give us a call at Messick’s 800-222-3373 or online at messicks.com.
[music]
Our shipping weights, they’re not-- [groans]
Get out of here.
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I’m shooting a video.
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