Gone Bad,,,,,

This would ruin your day, tow truck needs help !

I guess I'm confused.... last I knew brakes on semi's are "on" unless the vehicle is running. How could this truck be free wheeling? I'm not a semi driver, but aren't I close to correct?

Freddy wrote:I guess I'm confused.... last I knew brakes on semi's are "on" unless the vehicle is running. How could this truck be free wheeling? I'm not a semi driver, but aren't I close to correct?

The brakes are independent of the truck other than the air compressor on the motor. They even have connectors on them so if you wanted charge it with an external compressor you can do that. I know at the fire station my brother works at they have them hooked to air whenever they are parked so they don't have to wait for the pressure to come up.

There is giant springs on the brakes, these are the parking/emergency brakes. When the system is charged with air you can then release the parking brake. If the system does not have enough pressure to operate properly you'll get a warning buzzer and if it continues to lose air the parking brake will engage automatically. In this case the system must of still had pressure and no one ever manually engaged the parking brake. Someone would of had to gone in the cab and pushed the button for the brake or bleed the air tanks.

As far as the video goes I'm surprised it was able to flip the wrecker over, must be steeper hill than it looks like.

Now that is going to be one expensive tow bill.

A couple of 4 by 4's would have been a very good investment for wheel chocks.....unusual for the maxi's not to be on...but the rollover probably became a "Fruit of the Loom" moment and that detail was forgotten. The TT must have been REALLY heavy to roll an 80K wrecker with outriggers down. There had to be another wrecker on the uphill side to control the speed of the unrighting, or there would have benn one hell of a crash as the trailer returned to terra firma. Sad day for the crews...guess that is why they call them 'Accidents". None of us are perfect...and this only highlights it!

whistlenut wrote:The TT must have been REALLY heavy to roll an 80K wrecker with outriggers down. There had to be another wrecker on the uphill side to control the speed of the unrighting, or there would have benn one hell of a crash as the trailer returned to terra firma.

His first mistake was winching off the boom, he should have pulled the cables and run them off snatch blocks off the tailboard. We never righted trucks off the boom unless you had to, it's just looking for trouble and was hard on the older booms. No outriggers are extended and they probably wouldn't have helped in this situation, pulling off the boom just gives the load a mechanical advantage over the wrecker. I forget what you call those hydraulic shovels in the rear to keep the wrecker from getting dragged back but they were a lot easier to use than scotch blocks. Damn those things were heavy!

Even worse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRDp8ZNX ... =endscreen

Was the tow driver pulling the rig with a cable? That's what it looks like. Was there someone in the rig steering?

The guardrail really helped out didn't it? At least it slowed things down enough to let the tow driver escape.

I assume the rollover happened while under way ... so the brakes would not be set at that point, obviously. IF that had happened to me, the last thing on my mind would be pulling the maxi's - I'd be more concerned with where I was going to get a paycheck from the next day!

If there's air in the tanks, and the maxi's aren't set, she's free to go!