wanderingstar:
What can crawling uphill in traffic do Peirre?
A load can move backwards as well as forward.
How steep would that hill have to be for it to move back ■■
Depends if you started to roll back a bit and put the brakes on a bit sharpish.As i found out a few months ago.Luckily in a yard and with magazines on board.But started to roll back down a smallish slope you get on some bays.Hit the brakes as there was another trailer behind me.And i had shot a few pallets to the rear.So i would say it would’nt need to be that big a hill.
wanderingstar:
I wondered about that. Do you think there’s any need to strap pop at the back? Coud a pallet in theory tip over and bust the doors open? I can’t see what else the danger is, and I can’t see that actually happening. But in theory we are supposed to strap them.
Entirely up to you.As you know you are meant to strap them.But i always cross strap the rear pallets when i do pop.
Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This is normally taken as the definition of inertia. The key point here is that if there is no net force acting on an object (if all the external forces cancel each other out) then the object will maintain a constant velocity.
That means that your load wants to keep doing what it’s doing - mostly moving forward in a straight line. If you brake, it wants to keep going and with a properly packed load, it will be held back by the headboard. If you swerve, the load still wants to go straight, so it’s now whatever load restraint you have that stops it falling off the side.
When you move off from stationary, the load wants to stay put, so you rely on restraint again to stop it falling or sliding back; if you are on an up-slope then gravity gets involved too.
Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This is normally taken as the definition of inertia. The key point here is that if there is no net force acting on an object (if all the external forces cancel each other out) then the object will maintain a constant velocity.
That means that your load wants to keep doing what it’s doing - mostly moving forward in a straight line.
The question was raised elsewhere as to whether the relevant equation should be load security that’s strong enough to transmit the ‘kinetic energy’ of the load to the brakes.Where it’s turned into heat,based on the speed its actually travelling at,not its speed relative to the vehicle.Going by ‘that’ formula the whole issue of load security would need a re think.
Does anyone over there use a sheet of ply wood in front of loads like this? It’s what happens over here most of the time. It’s like having an extra headboard. It’s the same principle of sheeting. Sheet over load, rope or strap round the front back and over the top and it’s going nowhere.
Sudden stops are one cause. The most common place to shift a load is leaving a roundabout, you enter turning left, you then turn right as you go round, then back left again, it’s the ‘Pendulum effect’ the load movement gains momentum and more force as it swings left again. Of course, if the load is secured fast in the first place it shouldn’t move.
wanderingstar:
I wondered about that. Do you think there’s any need to strap pop at the back? Coud a pallet in theory tip over and bust the doors open? I can’t see what else the danger is, and I can’t see that actually happening. But in theory we are supposed to strap them.
I always strap pop across the back with ratchet straps. Plastic bottles stacked on each other aren’t the most stable load in the world and I’ve seen a few give way under civilised driving. Also, it’s not only pallets bursting through the back door whilst moving along you need to question, it’s whether they’ll fall out on whatever poor bugger opens the doors. If it’s somebody else, you could be held accountable if you’d picked the load up and not strapped across the back. If it’s you, you could be very seriously injured or even killed. Also, it’s not uncommon for an impatient forkie or pedestrian to walk behind you whilst reversing, and for you to do an emergency stop backwards. That’ll possibly shoot the load backwards too.
wanderingstar:
I sometimes carry soft drinks. Recently I shot a load of them and it was rejected and had to be repacked. On the way I had had one instance of harsh braking when a car cut in front of me but I was chatting to a driver after the incident and he said short, harsh braking is not as likely to shift a load as slowing quickly from speed on an downward incline, and in fact on that same trip I’d come off a motorway slip road that went down to a roundabout and braked much later than usual. Which do you think is more likely to cause a shifted load in general? A short sharp emergency brake, or pressure building over a number of seconds on a longer sweep like a downhill deceleration lane coming to a junction. I’ve always been dead careful with cornering to prevent sideways shifting but hadn’t really thought about forward shifting until this. I once had to emergency brake on one of the few times I carried steel
and heard the bars hit the headboard of the flatbed. I only heard the horror stories about shifting steel afterwards.
The answers will depend on how the load was “shot”. You say that it was drinks so assuming the load was a flush fit with pallets of the same height then there’s no way for it to go forwards. If it went backwards then that’s because of harsh acceleration, particularly if on an incline. If the pallets are well wrapped then unless double stacked or really tall/narrow there should be no need to put straps around the back of them if you’re a decent driver, but it doesn’t hurt to criss-cross a couple of straps if you’re not feeling comfortable.
Fox’s biscuits are one of the worst places for shot load potential. Despite being told thousands of times to use pallets the right size for the product they still continue to use blues with 6" of unfilled pallet space all around the product and then whinge like ■■■■ when the driver arrives at the RDC with a mountain broken biscuits wedged up against the headboard in a big pile .
The headboard will stop a palletised load of drinks or bottled water coming forward, a couple of straps across the back does the same job. Driving like a ■■■■ doesn’t stop the load coming through the curtains.
We loaded Nescafé jars from Ardagh to France. The only straps allowed were two across the back pallets, they gave us four empty’s to stand on their edge, you then strapped round them making a gate.
In my limited experience I’ve found the biggest risk to shooting a load is short sharp jerks, a smooth controlled rythum whether stopping or starting is ideal to keep ones load inplace.
Adopting a smooth style is great but we all know there’s unforseen events and the times when we need to just hurry up a bit, especially when late for a drop.
There’s nothing more awkward than arriving late whilst the recipient of your load is looking at you with that ‘hurry up’ expression.
[In your face everyone who’s thinking I can’t pull off a clean reply to this topic.]
Dipper_Dave:
In my limited experience I’ve found the biggest risk to shooting a load is short sharp jerks, a smooth controlled rythum whether stopping or starting is ideal to keep ones load inplace.
Adopting a smooth style is great but we all know there’s unforseen events and the times when we need to just hurry up a bit, especially when late for a drop.
There’s nothing more awkward than arriving late whilst the recipient of your load is looking at you with that ‘hurry up’ expression.
[In your face everyone who’s thinking I can’t pull off a clean reply to this topic.]
Dipper_Dave:
[In your face everyone who’s thinking I can’t pull off a clean reply to this topic.]
I object to the…
‘In your face’ reference.
Was it a Freudian slip or deliberate prose.
I reckon DD reviews and edits his posts a many times before hitting the “submit” button. Even a seemingly offhand comment is innuendo laden.
Or are we so used to him, we read what isn`t there? A bit like that old bloke from Stratford who wrote a few little scripts and has been “bigged up” summat rotten?
the whole issue of load security would need a re think. 
.