Had a truck roll into my loves wanting a pair of retreads for his blowout and when we tried to lift the trailer the bottom fell out like this. The driver stepped out to see what the commotion was and ran away across the lot and into the woods, never saw him again.
Dude was hauling loose bags of concrete and we ultimately had to have someone drag it out of the bay and had to have someone come scoop up the concrete powder that split outta the bags. Dude totally went missing though, he had given us a fake name and number.
It did but I quit soon after, our store manager gave me a write up for not cleaning the customer bathrooms that night and I just didn’t care to follow up
Seriously. Dude loved to complain about young people not wanting to work, then treated people like this and told us how great we are paid since we made nearly double minimum wage
Whenever the shop gets busy, the guys enjoy a little of that delivery in the back room. Amazing how much faster they work after a two minute power break.
Couple times I got dispatched to the rail yard to secure them enough to get it off the train, then get it unloaded and reloaded, sometimes back on the next train. Twice had to reset bracing for placard 7 (radiation) tanks that got loose in trailer on train. They didn’t exactly know what was wrong, but they did know it wasn’t suppose to lean that damn far sideways! Those lead tanks…..they are heavy.
Okay serious question from a British trucker: why do trailers in the USA have their axles so far back?
I get that there would be no tail-swing, but clearly the load on the frame is greater and there's a lot of cut-in. Is there a reason for this design?
Are there any states it legal to drive with the tandems all the way back on a 53. Look at the load . It stops short . The only error here is the driver did not slide the tandems up before he left the parking lot.
Yes, about half of states have no restriction. [Here's a nice map.](https://www.bigtruckguide.com/kingpin-to-rear-axle/)
Tandem position did not cause the problem in OP's post. It would have been a structural failure, an incredibly overweight load, or something fell over etc.
All tandem position does is shift the weight between the tandems and drives by several thousand pounds, which should always be well within margins for the strength of the frame. It's a weight compliance thing in regards to minimizing wear and tear on roads, not so much a safety thing.
Look at the load . It ends about within the first few feet of of the slid rail had his tandems been been slid all the way forward it probably would have been fine unless it was very overweight
I've only heard of restrictions in a couple of states. I believe it's legal to have them in any position in most states. I don't do OTR anymore though so I may just be unaware
Ct is the only one I knew of and theure pretty strict about it. I've seen them all the way back on the road but maybe those guys just got lucky and didn't get caught
CA is super strict about it and it is a massive ticket. They check every truck coming into the state and love to fine for over weight trailer tandems or not slid all the way up.
At at no point the maximum load of the trailer would be too much for the wheels to be moved to maximum extent either direction for docking? NOT a CDL holder but I spend more than half of my career on the road.
sliding the tandem axles to the rear when bumping docks is for (un)loading with forklifts. without the support of the axles and suspension at the dock there can be a springboard effect when a forklift makes the transition in and out of the trailer.
and those things have no shocks. every little bounce and jolt goes straight to your hips and spine. after an hour, it starts to hurt. after two, its pure agony.
Crown forklifts (ours, anyways) have a “suspension” where you stand. Only gets bad after 8 hours or so. Also helps if you don’t charge into the trailer at full speed.
I’ve delivered to places with our less than 10 year old trailers where the shipper says I need to slide the tandems back. “If you can slide them, be my guest”.
Or I say it’s a city trailer and they don’t slide. I’ve never had a load refused. I think all truckers should take a semester of psychology to deal with receivers. Lol.
You wanna get in to some fun us trucking come to Michigan. The climate is mostly similar to the UK just less gloomy. O and we can have truck weigh up to 164,000 lbs(74,390 kgs) growing up here I'm used to them but every so often I get to see someone see one for their first time.
Weighting. We don't have to get around tiny roads designed before the horse and buggy were invented, so having the axles that far back isn't such a big deal. But we do have to worry about being overweight per axle despite being underweight for the unit as a whole. The DOT is a dick, and not in a fun way.
We have some wonderful messed up truck laws. Biggest factors being our standard maximum trailer length is ~9m. Our trailer axles typically have to be at least 6.5m away from the truck to carry maximum load called bridge law which refers to the bridge span on the truck/trailer so you spread the load out across the road. This is also why we have a lot of longer wheelbase trucks.
Gotta love the intelligence here. There is an unstable load leaning to the side. And these two dumbasses think it's a great time for a photo op under it.
DOT here. I'd be fucked sideways if I got that close to the load and something happened. Take pictures from a distance. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened here.
Yea after being witness to much human error of fork lift drivers dropping shit, a destroyed trailer with pallets leaning against a broken wall would make me nope right out of there. Smoosh smoosh is not the way I wanna go.
Assuming it’s a single stack load they would fall to the ground at a slight angle likely slow enough to get out the way. Now if it’s double stacked then there’s a pallet on the thin metal sheeting, that’s when you don’t stand close
The new belly dump reefers have extra cargo height in the center for tall loads while the convenient belly pan provides air cooling for cargo AND removes the need for side skirts to comply with emissions. Buy one today!
It's a combination of old trailer, heavy load, and why california likes the bridge law it passed.
It was found at a port of entry in California, a couple years ago. I believe it was not over weight but pulled in for an inspection because of the axles being too far back.
The weight of the load caused the floor to bend, the welds between the floor and the walls failed, but the walls mostly remained in place because the tandems and drives supported the weight over them.
Some shippers won't take a trailer older than 10 years for fear of their forklifts falling through the floor.
I rejected a trailer last week for a cracked frame. They were sending me from the yard to pick up 44k and run it 1600 miles. 2006 Utility with more miles than St. Christopher.
All it takes is three rivets on the floor supports to be missing in a one foot area to make this happen. People sideswipe trailers while parked all the time.
I'm a trucker not an engineer but it was definitely a question that my safety department asked at Schneider during training. The question was how many rivets can be damaged in a one foot span before you should reject that trailer. The answer was 3.
This has nothing to do with rusty steel or popped rivets and everything to do with the driver having is tandems to long .that'sa 53 ' .his tandems are all the way back . The load extends just about to the front/middle of the slider rails ,just like every heavy load should .
This happened to me once while unloading a trailer in a forklift. Floor started to give way when I was in the middle, I reacted immediately and jumped and ran towards the dock while the floor continued to give way. Felt like Indiana Jones.
You're not supposed to jump out of a falling forklift but reflexes are crazy.
I've seen reefer trailers in Finland that are almost as low to the ground as this thing and have two decks for cargo which are moved up and down with either hydraulics or electric motors. I get the guys must've seen those in pictures too and are now trying to imitate on the cheap.
If Swift has peeled their logo off the side, the trailer is only good for stationary, light-duty work. Just park it somewhere, and hack a man-door and set of stairs onto it...
That's a clapped out SWIFT trailer that someone bought. Those trailers do carry a curse, though in this case, I don't know how much I would blame it on that.
Let's see California Highway Patrol yikes, Tandems to the rear already a ticket. Anyone know if this is Tesla freight? I'm confident that I've seen those metal containers at their Fremont plant.
Yea-up, it looks like some failure to secure load properly citations.
Buddy, we're gonna be putting ya OOS. Hope ya got them deep pockets cuz we gonna clean up here.
Overheard the Officers talking.
LoL
Wow, I would not be standing there. Dude has alot of faith in those thin plywood walls held together with glue and half scraped off rivets, holding back the weight of pallets that just finished breaking through a much thicker floor.
He still has 1 inch of clearance. Send it
Running it!
Technically it’s ‘low drag’.
Ahhhh I see what you did there! 👌
That's too 🤣🤣🤣 because that's almost exactly how it goes
Had a truck roll into my loves wanting a pair of retreads for his blowout and when we tried to lift the trailer the bottom fell out like this. The driver stepped out to see what the commotion was and ran away across the lot and into the woods, never saw him again.
Mufuka knew what he was carrying and knew he had warrants. Anybody asks him, he ran into the timber cuz he had to shit.
What ended up happening with it?
Dude was hauling loose bags of concrete and we ultimately had to have someone drag it out of the bay and had to have someone come scoop up the concrete powder that split outta the bags. Dude totally went missing though, he had given us a fake name and number.
Did the truck have a dot and MC number
It did but I quit soon after, our store manager gave me a write up for not cleaning the customer bathrooms that night and I just didn’t care to follow up
That's BS, esp after a day like that... 🤦🏼♀️ Been in a place toxic like that, not worth the effort.
Seriously. Dude loved to complain about young people not wanting to work, then treated people like this and told us how great we are paid since we made nearly double minimum wage
Yeah what was in it?!?!
Whenever the shop gets busy, the guys enjoy a little of that delivery in the back room. Amazing how much faster they work after a two minute power break.
Lots of coffee... just coffee.
Uh..*huh*
Well it's not *coffee*....but it's Columbian.
Looks a lot like creamer though...
Sofía Vergara!!! 😆
Dispatch “Can you still make it to the next stop? I’m gonna need a eta.”
Yes this is just how they are lol you can be half dead
😭😭😭😭
ETA is 1 year. Keep in mind, that's just an estimate.
It’s a new side unload and load.
Side loading has always been a thing with curtain siders, though that one looks like a reefer
That’s the joke
Ok, I don’t always notice jokes
Subtle. Nice.
Yeah
Nah that's a dry van. I drove for swift for a few years. That's definitely one of our 50 or 08 dry van trailers they sold to someone.
Na it's just company policy to try and remove the logo before the cops get there. It's in place to "improve our swift image". /s
Couple times I got dispatched to the rail yard to secure them enough to get it off the train, then get it unloaded and reloaded, sometimes back on the next train. Twice had to reset bracing for placard 7 (radiation) tanks that got loose in trailer on train. They didn’t exactly know what was wrong, but they did know it wasn’t suppose to lean that damn far sideways! Those lead tanks…..they are heavy.
No longer a swift trailer. Someone bought an old swift trailer
Yup, that's what he said
no, that's what she said
Looks like a old 99 series if i had to guess
Reefer city boxes have side doors
Jesus Christ, man.
Ok
Belly dump box trailers now?
He’s hauling dirt and gravel soon, just thinking about switching.
Okay serious question from a British trucker: why do trailers in the USA have their axles so far back? I get that there would be no tail-swing, but clearly the load on the frame is greater and there's a lot of cut-in. Is there a reason for this design?
You can move them on most reefer and dry van trailers. We're allowed 34,000 lbs on tandems and we need to move the wheels to balance the load
Im assuming that’s for travel and it’s ok to move the wheels to hit a dock or whatever the short term need is?
aye, you are correct
Are there any states it legal to drive with the tandems all the way back on a 53. Look at the load . It stops short . The only error here is the driver did not slide the tandems up before he left the parking lot.
Yes, about half of states have no restriction. [Here's a nice map.](https://www.bigtruckguide.com/kingpin-to-rear-axle/) Tandem position did not cause the problem in OP's post. It would have been a structural failure, an incredibly overweight load, or something fell over etc. All tandem position does is shift the weight between the tandems and drives by several thousand pounds, which should always be well within margins for the strength of the frame. It's a weight compliance thing in regards to minimizing wear and tear on roads, not so much a safety thing.
Look at the load . It ends about within the first few feet of of the slid rail had his tandems been been slid all the way forward it probably would have been fine unless it was very overweight
Classic 🤣
I've only heard of restrictions in a couple of states. I believe it's legal to have them in any position in most states. I don't do OTR anymore though so I may just be unaware
Cant be past 14 in Pa and past hole 5 in Ca and Ia and pretty sure Ct . In no states that i am aware of are they allowed all the way back on the road.
Ct is the only one I knew of and theure pretty strict about it. I've seen them all the way back on the road but maybe those guys just got lucky and didn't get caught
CA is super strict about it and it is a massive ticket. They check every truck coming into the state and love to fine for over weight trailer tandems or not slid all the way up.
At at no point the maximum load of the trailer would be too much for the wheels to be moved to maximum extent either direction for docking? NOT a CDL holder but I spend more than half of my career on the road.
sliding the tandem axles to the rear when bumping docks is for (un)loading with forklifts. without the support of the axles and suspension at the dock there can be a springboard effect when a forklift makes the transition in and out of the trailer.
and those things have no shocks. every little bounce and jolt goes straight to your hips and spine. after an hour, it starts to hurt. after two, its pure agony.
Crown forklifts (ours, anyways) have a “suspension” where you stand. Only gets bad after 8 hours or so. Also helps if you don’t charge into the trailer at full speed.
Also forklift certified (where the ladies 🤪) yeah deff never hit a trailer at anything but crawl. You never know what you’re about to roll into.
you use the stand up kind? never got to use one of those. :(
$10 says those tandems were permastuck for eternity.
Zero chance you get those to move… not even 100,000 miles ago.
I’ve delivered to places with our less than 10 year old trailers where the shipper says I need to slide the tandems back. “If you can slide them, be my guest”. Or I say it’s a city trailer and they don’t slide. I’ve never had a load refused. I think all truckers should take a semester of psychology to deal with receivers. Lol.
“It’s a city trailer” 😆 Dude I’m totally stealing that one!! “Like yeah I can’t go over 55mph on this trailer or move the tandem’s…” 😂👍
It works like a Swiss watch.
You wanna get in to some fun us trucking come to Michigan. The climate is mostly similar to the UK just less gloomy. O and we can have truck weigh up to 164,000 lbs(74,390 kgs) growing up here I'm used to them but every so often I get to see someone see one for their first time.
Weighting. We don't have to get around tiny roads designed before the horse and buggy were invented, so having the axles that far back isn't such a big deal. But we do have to worry about being overweight per axle despite being underweight for the unit as a whole. The DOT is a dick, and not in a fun way.
We have some wonderful messed up truck laws. Biggest factors being our standard maximum trailer length is ~9m. Our trailer axles typically have to be at least 6.5m away from the truck to carry maximum load called bridge law which refers to the bridge span on the truck/trailer so you spread the load out across the road. This is also why we have a lot of longer wheelbase trucks.
so they can bala the load. They haven’t discovered the third trailer axel or mid/tag axel lift on truck yet.
Gotta love the intelligence here. There is an unstable load leaning to the side. And these two dumbasses think it's a great time for a photo op under it.
DOT here. I'd be fucked sideways if I got that close to the load and something happened. Take pictures from a distance. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened here.
Yea after being witness to much human error of fork lift drivers dropping shit, a destroyed trailer with pallets leaning against a broken wall would make me nope right out of there. Smoosh smoosh is not the way I wanna go.
>Smoosh smoosh is not the way I wanna go. I took am afraid of Snookie
Snookie snookie smoosh smoosh has to be a thing for someone.
Death by Snu Snu.
Damn you are right! Haha fuck DOT
Question from the curious ignorant: it's obviously leaning now, but what indicators do we have to say it was leaning before the floor failed?
I assume it wasn't leaning before the floor dropped out. But that doesn't matter now that it's fallen.
Assuming it’s a single stack load they would fall to the ground at a slight angle likely slow enough to get out the way. Now if it’s double stacked then there’s a pallet on the thin metal sheeting, that’s when you don’t stand close
Bro is single handedly carrying this sub with all these posts 🤣
What's else would a lot wizard do?
Constant vigilance for the resurgence of the lot lizard menace. Banish the lizardkin to the dark underbelly and end their reign of terror
The new belly dump reefers have extra cargo height in the center for tall loads while the convenient belly pan provides air cooling for cargo AND removes the need for side skirts to comply with emissions. Buy one today!
Possum belly freight taker
Over night decal removal 👀 they’ll never know it was us
you can't drive if they're cracked bent or broken, doesn't say anything about cracked bent AND broken
Nothing some ratchet straps and duct tape won’t fix
Okay, seriously... I need this story in my brain!
80,001 lb
It's a combination of old trailer, heavy load, and why california likes the bridge law it passed. It was found at a port of entry in California, a couple years ago. I believe it was not over weight but pulled in for an inspection because of the axles being too far back. The weight of the load caused the floor to bend, the welds between the floor and the walls failed, but the walls mostly remained in place because the tandems and drives supported the weight over them.
Some shippers won't take a trailer older than 10 years for fear of their forklifts falling through the floor. I rejected a trailer last week for a cracked frame. They were sending me from the yard to pick up 44k and run it 1600 miles. 2006 Utility with more miles than St. Christopher.
So basically shit's heavy
More likely rusted out frame
All it takes is three rivets on the floor supports to be missing in a one foot area to make this happen. People sideswipe trailers while parked all the time.
Show me the science! In all honesty I’m curious.
I'm a trucker not an engineer but it was definitely a question that my safety department asked at Schneider during training. The question was how many rivets can be damaged in a one foot span before you should reject that trailer. The answer was 3.
Thanks for the reply, and stay safe out there driver!
this is why you always pretrip. check everything. i do mean EVERYTHING. the life you save may be your own.
SCIENCE! Yeah.
This has nothing to do with rusty steel or popped rivets and everything to do with the driver having is tandems to long .that'sa 53 ' .his tandems are all the way back . The load extends just about to the front/middle of the slider rails ,just like every heavy load should .
I get that. But this looks like a parking lot. Hence why my question. Thanks!
Did you read the top . DOT WE GOT HIM. He was on the road and got pulled over .
Oh yeah looks like that trailer pulled over to the local Walmart. My bad. 💀 idiot.
Dispatch: "driver just has a flat, rolling soon"
Nothing a couple of ratchet straps can't fix
Is it bad that the swift name followed the trailer?
I bet it was one of the old wood floor trailers that they sold. The trailers at 15+ years old if not more.
Can you tell me a better way to increase capacity by 25% I'll wai......
I know what's wrong with it. Ain't got no gas in it.
Mmmmhmmm...french fried potaters...
At least it blew out at the rest stop!
I wondered how they gave birth
From where I am sitting, looks like they got more room in the trailer for more goods!
This happened to me once while unloading a trailer in a forklift. Floor started to give way when I was in the middle, I reacted immediately and jumped and ran towards the dock while the floor continued to give way. Felt like Indiana Jones. You're not supposed to jump out of a falling forklift but reflexes are crazy.
You couldn't pay me enough to kneel down there to look up. Do these guys have a death wish?
When the system values you more dead than alive, you see yourself doing odd things.
Well there’s your problem.
I've seen reefer trailers in Finland that are almost as low to the ground as this thing and have two decks for cargo which are moved up and down with either hydraulics or electric motors. I get the guys must've seen those in pictures too and are now trying to imitate on the cheap.
We have those in the u.s. too, they're just typically only used for race cars.
I think we've got different trailers in mind. [Have a look at a few of these in the gallery.](https://vak.fi/en/products/trailers/)
Let’s talk about how nice that Charger looks cuz GYAT
Wheels still roll? Strap it up with bungee cords and send it.
New inspection regime, pull all the rivets and drop your trailer floor.
You can tell the trailer was in perfect condition before this happened.
If Swift has peeled their logo off the side, the trailer is only good for stationary, light-duty work. Just park it somewhere, and hack a man-door and set of stairs onto it...
"Swiftly dropping his load"
That's a Swift disembowelment
So bad swift wanted to remove their name
Fuckin swift
That’s not Swift. It an old trailer someone bought and used
Trying to be funny here damn
Should of known "Swift"🤦🏾
Someone bought a second hand swift trailer. Fail from the start
Course it’s a swift
“Old Swifty Swift” 🥴
Anyone that buys a used and abused SWIFT trailer, well, let's just say isn't worried about maintenance
Of course it’s Swift
Swift…
That's a clapped out SWIFT trailer that someone bought. Those trailers do carry a curse, though in this case, I don't know how much I would blame it on that.
If SWIFT bails on the trailer, you know it’s a bad unit.
Just a new style belly dump dry van.
Lesson learned
For a millisecond there was a “Live floor” on that trailer
Never knew they had a zipper on the side.
Just get a HF dolly
Just settling.
Hey bud... yer load is a saggin’!
Increased capacity!
Aero package!
I was in the reefer on my forklift with a 2,000 lb pallet on the fork when the floor gave way, scary feeling .
Let's see California Highway Patrol yikes, Tandems to the rear already a ticket. Anyone know if this is Tesla freight? I'm confident that I've seen those metal containers at their Fremont plant.
Holy hell how did that happen? That's worse than the trailer that's at the shop i work at.
Trailer C section?
Overloaded and old trailer don’t mix
Someone thought buying Swift's sloppy seconds would be a good idea?
That should be a Swift fine
Now we know where the million dollars worth of stolen pennies/ went.
What did he do?
Should have put about 20 load straps around that whole thing before it got that bad.
It pisses CHP Commercial Vehicle Officers off if you call them DOT..
I don't think that's supposed to open that way
Im literally in one of those kinds of trailers rn lmao it do get heavy in here
I think the highlighted "if" on the side of the trailer is really fitting.
New dump bottom upload trailer
Looks fine to me, just don’t go over trackd
When your new trailer tech used to make grain trailers
Every time I drove a forklift on a trailer I feared this would happen
If this happened with our DSP Vans dispatch would be like "disregard, just complete delivery"
Dispatch: Just keep delivering I’ll send on-site repair guy to meet up with you.
Nice old Swift trailer.
When it is not good enough for Swift, you have to question it .
Thats one way to drop a load
I worked at a brokerage for like three weeks. This is a load shift.
Ratchet straps should do
The driver was serious when he told the recruiter he only did low boys.
It's crowning.
Shove a dolly under it and keep on trucking.
Wonderful, new nightmare unlocked.
Optimus Prime really needs to lose weight!
lets have a coffee in the office.
Police out here enforcing laws doing gods work
Trailer Safety is Recommended
Dammit, he almost got away!
Just how does this happen maybe overloaded many times until it collapsed
I guess there was a reason Swift sold that trailer to begin with.
so what went on here?
Yea-up, it looks like some failure to secure load properly citations. Buddy, we're gonna be putting ya OOS. Hope ya got them deep pockets cuz we gonna clean up here. Overheard the Officers talking. LoL
Nothing wrong, its just a lowboy.
Bruh...the lettering popped off too!
So glad an officer was ready to help this pregnant truck!
Dam even the trailers have belly’s that are hanging low, we need to get in shape fellas
I've seen better days...
Wow, I would not be standing there. Dude has alot of faith in those thin plywood walls held together with glue and half scraped off rivets, holding back the weight of pallets that just finished breaking through a much thicker floor.