Side Loading of Machines

[Nick Drew]

Ok, Its very quiet here tonight

So I thought I would start a thread about the art of side loading machines onto low loaders (Lowboys) for our American friends.

When I posted these photos on the American site HEF they seemed to cause quite a bit of controversy, (not difficult on there of course!!)

I am seen in the shots putting a Komatsu PC450-7 onto a Nooteboom lowloader at a site in Plymouth, Devon.
The lorry driver was in a hurry to get going and asked me to "pop it over the side". In my younger years as an operator this was a common practice and I had done it 1000s of times but not with such a large machine.

Just would be interested to hear other members thoughts about this practice??

[§wishy]

Nik
GuddayM8

Great Pix
keep m Cummin

n heres the §wish chuckin one over the side
tiz only a little beast this day as the cameraman aint always available
tiz a slo animation
whatchit right through 1st then itll speed up once all the images R in cache


WATCHIT



cya
§wishy
HasBeen

[Nick Drew]

Great to see Swishy !!

I know there is a whole generation out in the field now who have never seen this done let alone done it !!

Thanks for the clip

Nick

[martyn williams]

Hello Nick
When I worked on plant in Devon,the lowloader did not have ramps,just two railway sleepers and packing.We loaded nearly all the track machines over the side. When I was a kid in a mining valley all the 22 RBs were loaded across the bed when moved between sites,the jibs were never shortened so you had 20 foot sticking past the end of the lowloader. All the motor scrapers were roaded sometimes 30 mile between site to site.I can also remember a CAT 951 drivern on the main road on a big water pipe laying job in 1970,it was drivern 5 miles!!
Any pictures out there of Short Bros plant hire machines? They were the main NCB plant contractors in the area.

[Robban_C]

Nick and §wishy:
Very nice pictures.

There´s just one thing that confuses me.
I don´t drive that big excavators, my own EC35 are quite easy to load and transport as you all know. But I have driven all Volvo compacts and several of the "grown ups" from EC140 to EC700 and most of the wheeled ones as well at Volvo when working as a demonstration driver.
Of course I don´t have any experience from loading bigger machines on a trailer but I would have done just that way if you asked me except from that piece of wood that were put under the trailer (haven´t thought about that but it seems natural now that I see it) if the "goose neck" (is it called that i English?) on the trailer wasn´t or couldn´t be removed. Maybe I should have used the bucket to lift the undercarriage sligthly when turning on the trailer just to prevent damaging the wood on the trailer (if there are any wood on it).

So my question is why the pic´s "caused quite a bit of controversy" on the US site?




Nick, there are some kind of rounded thing between the tracs (best seen on 12.jpg) on the Komatsu. Looks almot as the chisel (correct word?) of a hydraulic hammer. What is it?

[Nick Drew]

So my question is why the pic´s "caused quite a bit of controversy" on the US site?

Well Robban, On the American site there is a "We know best attitude" and they considered this practice to be dangerous and liable to cause damage to the trailer?? I tried to point out that if it is performed correctly there is no problem

Nick, there are some kind of rounded thing between the tracs (best seen on 12.jpg) on the Komatsu. Looks almot as the chisel (correct word?) of a hydraulic hammer. What is it?

Yes Robban that was a Furukawa F45LN Hammer.....A very powerful rock breaker.

[Robban_C]

Ok, now I saw the mount of the hammer on the other end of the undercarriage.
So, it´s a smart way of bringing the hammer to and from the workplace or why do you put it there?
Do you reach right in under the undercarriage to bring the hammer there?

[Nick Drew]

Ok, now I saw the mount of the hammer on the other end of the undercarriage.
So, it´s a smart way of bringing the hammer to and from the workplace or why do you put it there?
Do you reach right in under the undercarriage to bring the hammer there?

Yes Robban,

The Yellow mount that you can see is actually a ripper tooth the mount of the hammer is further underneath we lowered it in with chains & then pushed it under with the machine using a large block of timber.

To be honest I think the truck must of been slightly overweight and he had a long way to go as the machine had to be on a site near Heathrow in London the next morning

Nick

[rvannatta]

Ok, now I saw the mount of the hammer on the other end of the undercarriage.
So, it´s a smart way of bringing the hammer to and from the workplace or why do you put it there?
Do you reach right in under the undercarriage to bring the hammer there?

Yes Robban,

The Yellow mount that you can see is actually a ripper tooth the mount of the hammer is further underneath we lowered it in with chains & then pushed it under with the machine using a large block of timber.

To be honest I think the truck must of been slightly overweight and he had a long way to go as the machine had to be on a site near Heathrow in London the next morning

Nick

Hadnt got you your photo yet--- I just posted a similar photo set under hauling only we left the undercarriage crossways
for transport as we were hauling off highway. -- then drove off on a small bank. IN answer to the concern over theh planks---the street pads dont dig into them so you can generally turn as needed. We even load our HD-16 Fiat Allis that way, and have loaded much larger. OUr lowboy comes apart, but loading over the side is so much faster when possible.

Off highway we prefer to haul the excavators that way if possible because then there is do danger of
the excavator sliding off the trailer. --- Were it to depart the trailer--- it would be just like driving off and
wouldlnt hurt anything.

[v8detroit]

Ok, Its very quiet here tonight

So I thought I would start a thread about the art of side loading machines onto low loaders (Lowboys) for our American friends.

When I posted these photos on the American site HEF they seemed to cause quite a bit of controversy, (not difficult on there of course!!)

I am seen in the shots putting a Komatsu PC450-7 onto a Nooteboom lowloader at a site in Plymouth, Devon.
The lorry driver was in a hurry to get going and asked me to "pop it over the side". In my younger years as an operator this was a common practice and I had done it 1000s of times but not with such a large machine.

Just would be interested to hear other members thoughts about this practice??

i drove the first low loader bcl plant had a 113 scania when i left 5 years later they had a 144 the bigest machine we moved was the pc340 on
the andover stepframe.as for low beds it is a lot faster to load over the side we some times had to do it with a stepfame ,no problem as long as
you dont go mad.