El Sumo, this might be a daft question after whats just happened to you , but how do you find them Mercs handle in general? Mine seems to bounce and float about with a mind of its own, my hearts in my mouth with it sometimes.
Good to see you ok BTW.
Mike-C:
El Sumo, this might be a daft question after whats just happened to you , but how do you find them Mercs handle in general? Mine seems to bounce and float about with a mind of its own, my hearts in my mouth with it sometimes.
Good to see you ok BTW.
to be honest mate i never had any probs with her , i thought she drove well…but then again , some trucks " feel " different to others…i hope yours sorts itself out . By the way mine was a low cab Actros , not a MegaSpace , that might make a difference .
Good luck with her 
ossie:
shuttlespanker:
ossie:
Looks like the Skelly was in closed up position when it should have been extended to laden weight position for stability!take another look at the pics ■■■■■■■■, it’s a 40 foot box
how do you run with the skelly in the “closed” position with a 40 footer?
Ok thought it was a 20ft box of “Scrap Metal”. If it was a 40ft box of “Scrap Metal” it would have been overweight so hope it was scrap paper!
Picture was a bit dark to tell it was a 40ft Container!
We all make mistakes but was no need for bad language!
Hope you can accept an apology.
ive been overweight on a hooklift container filled with scrap paper and its probably 20ft long at most, ended up weighing in at 33500kg, i was driving an 8 legger at the time and i got weighed before i left and let on my way while they knew i was overweight but i never until i got to the recycling plant.
glad your ok though dude id have a big brown streak following me after that and probably wouldnt be back at work for like a week.
Mike-C:
El Sumo, this might be a daft question after whats just happened to you , but how do you find them Mercs handle in general? Mine seems to bounce and float about with a mind of its own, my hearts in my mouth with it sometimes.
Good to see you ok BTW.
When I drove one I wasn’t too keen on the handling - too keen to throw itself at potholes and tramlines. I thought it had taken it upon itself to commit suicide on the the A1 one morning by throwing itself off the side. Later ones have been better, as I had an MP1.
Can you tell us how the scrap moved, assuming that you know? This may prevent others having a similar incident.
xjrv8:
Can you tell us how the scarp moved, assuming that you know? This may prevent others having a similar incident.
im guessing here but what they ususally do is ti the container on one end and opent he other end and loading it upright and its probably just dropped in so it will generally move about. i think he was just very unlucky but having never drivem one of these i wouldnt know. when i was on hooklifts i was always slow at roundabouts etc because it never ever felt safe going round them, always felt i was gonna be going over.
Hi el sumo,
it certainly looks like you had a ‘guardian angel’ on your shoulder when the motor decided to go walkabout 
and good to see you got out of it uninjured.
The phenomenom of slow rollover is not new and I’m surprised that it is something that drivers are not more aware of. Excessive speed is always the first reaction from anyone who hasn’t experienced this happenning to them!!
As far as I aware this ‘phenomenom’ has been proven by physics and rollover can happen to a slow moving vehicle just as much as it can to a fast moving vehicle.
A few examples that I remember:-
1971 - the haulage co; I worked for carried reels of paper from Purfleet to the Convoys warehouse in Manchester for the regional newspapers. A night trunk vehicle had packed up at Knutsford services and the driver had left it there so in the morning I drove our mechanic out to fix it and and for him then to bring the load into M/cr. The mechanic sorted the motor out and set off from the services and took the first exit off the M6 (A56) into Stretford & M/cr he went up to the roundabout and carried on onto what I suppose would be the very outside of the roundabout but when he came to take his exit to the left the whole lot just swayed and went over to the right 
. Now I was behind him in the service van and his speed never went above 20mph the load was still sheeted & roped and never moved from the trailer. It was defended at court and the mechanic & company where aquitted as the ‘slow rollover’ defence was used and accepted at court. It was shown that the particular circumstances at the time, height of load, camber of road and route the driver had taken round the big roundabout had all conspired to set in motion a series of events that couldn’t be classed as careless driving or insecure loading but might be construed as possibly unavoidable for an inexperienced driver just as the mechanic was!
The mechanic hadn’t been with the Co; that long and had joined straight from the Army and really really hadn’t driven a GUY BIG J with a load on before so his inexperience was for real.
Apparently it is all to do with the centre of gravity of the load, road cambers and positioning of vehicle when entering or leaving roundabouts or long sweeping bends and sometimes this type of ‘slow rollover’ can start to happen well before the driver is even aware of anything going pear shaped and usually by that time its too late
1987 - I never thought that what happened in 1971 would be something that I would experience for myself I was working out of Seaforth on the ACL/Cunard contract and some of the boxes we moved would be reefers with the ‘clip on type’ fridge units and that already made them heavy at the front and apples were always known to be top heavy and were usually in these ‘chiller clip on type’ reefers. Now the Co; I was on for had already had one these ‘apple boxes’ turned on its side at Switch Island with the ‘pilot’s’ right arm going out the window and him being very lucky that it was saved (Micro Surgery) so we were always warned to take things very steady with these boxes. Anyway I picked one up one night and was just running it back into the yard for a trl; swap I had come down the road to the take a right into the yard and just as I swung to the right I just felt it start to go over to the left I was in a Merc 2028 manual box and in 2nd gear so I just swung the wheel to the left and forced the box into 1st and as the outfit came to an almost standstill in a straight line I felt everything settle on the unit springs and could feel the thing rocking from side to side ever so slightly!
Gotta say I did crap myself that night as I thought I was home & dry and was just pulling into the yard but the centre of gravity, the camber of the road and the law of physics conspired to try and put me in the ■■■ big time 
Apologies for rambling on a bit but the more I wrote the more I remembered
Regards
Dave Penn;
What a thing to do el sumo, just to get a good thread going.
Seriously though , glad you,re ok. mate. Will ring you Mon.
nick2008:
Smoking in the work place
Glad you’re Ok mate - but if you were smoking; well 60mph on a roundabout is OK but not if you’re smokin
PS - now officially an ex-smoker, but I promise not to become one of those ex-smokers 
xjrv8:
Can you tell us how the scrap moved, assuming that you know? This may prevent others having a similar incident.
She was loaded with non-ferrous metal scrap mate .Imagine when they scrap a car , they make it into a " cube " of metal . Now imagine these 6 to a layer and 3/4 high…Still with me
Now put 2 pallet on top of each other , 22 pallets ,down the trailer , then put the last 4 pallets on the floor…
The reason i think it moved was because there is a gap of maybe 4-6 inches down the middle of the box…this , i think , means as i went round he corner the load on my n/s decided to join the load on the o/s of the box…approx 13ton sliding right as it where 
Hope that gives you an idea mate , right i"m off to the Doctors for a check up…
el sumo:
xjrv8:
Can you tell us how the scrap moved, assuming that you know? This may prevent others having a similar incident.She was loaded with non-ferrous metal scrap mate .Imagine when they scrap a car , they make it into a " cube " of metal . Now imagine these 6 to a layer and 3/4 high…Still with me
Now put 2 pallet on top of each other , 22 pallets ,down the trailer , then put the last 4 pallets on the floor…The reason i think it moved was because there is a gap of maybe 4-6 inches down the middle of the box…this , i think , means as i went round he corner the load on my n/s decided to join the load on the o/s of the box…approx 13ton sliding right as it where
Hope that gives you an idea mate , right i"m off to the Doctors for a check up…
ooooh, nasty, i had that with bales of paper, came off a roundabout where NYR is at Snodland and a bale on the nearside rolled over to the offside, lifted the wheels on the trailer slightly until the EBS kicked in and virtually stopped the truck, likewise, i was only doing about 10 to 15mph
Did the phonecall to your boss go like this?
“Hello boss, El Sumo here I appear to have broken my offside mirror”.
“How did you manage that?”
“Well the trucks lying on it”.
Cue deathly silence…
Seriously though, I’m glad your okay…
Hope your OK mate, looks a bad rollover.
I had a trailer airbag go on a doubledecker going into Bristol on the M32 a few years ago. How I never lost her I don’t know, it went at the bottom on that tight bend. She lurched right over. I needed a change of pants as I thought she was going over, not a nice feeling.
I’ve been on tanker anti rollover training and it’s surprising how easy it is to topple a motor at such a slow speed!!!