Excavator facing forwards on lowboy?

[Chopper95]

Had never seen this done until maybe this spring when I spotted a Cat 336 facing forwards (stick curled in as usual but pointing towards the cab of the tractor) on a RGN lowboy and thought it was a little bizarre.

But today I am cruising along and pass a Cat dealer hauling a 349 in one piece on 7 axles with the damn thing pointed forwards and the cab and the guy has the whole stick / boom assembly swung off to the passenger side of the trailer neck and the counterweight poking out the driver side rear end of the trailer.

Is this to make axle weight or what in the world am I missing here? Never had seen anything like this done up until this year.

 

[1693TA]

Most likely to scale correctly. I don't know if the counterweight is removable or not, but if so this may have been reasoned to save time/effort by not removing it.

I've hauled them both ways in the past too and always looking for the best fitment on the trailer. Nothing this large however.

 

[AzIron]

On a lot of trailers boom back is the only way you can go to get the boom low enough and get weight on the drives

 

[Jimothy]

Last year we saw truck in front of us with a 20 ton size excavator loaded sideways… guessing it was going from one farmers field to the next ? Haha no idea if it was even tied down but it was moving fast enough that it probably woulda flipped off

You would think you need an escort or at least so flags for that

 

[CM1995]

Well if nothing else the excavator needs to be facing backwards if possible if nothing more than low bridges.

An excavator facing forward tends to make the boom a can opener to any overhead obstruction or in this case a bridge.. This image is all over HEF and happened somewhere out West.



If the boom is facing rear ward the curve of the boom pushes the stick into the trailer resulting in less damage to overhead structures.



We all make mistakes and sometimes that sign on the side of the road before the bridge might not be correct so we always err on the side of caution and load the boom to the rear of the trailer. A 55K hoe is easily loaded and legally spread on a 3 axle drop deck with the boom to the rear in AL.

 

[dirty4fun]

The pipeline that went through our area years ago hauled their crane and excavators sideways. Some of the cranes had 50-60' of boom hanging out the back. Small towns around let many things happen that wouldn't in a city.

Last year we saw truck in front of us with a 20 ton size excavator loaded sideways… guessing it was going from one farmers field to the next ? Haha no idea if it was even tied down but it was moving fast enough that it probably woulda flipped off

You would think you need an escort or at least so flags for that

 

[John C.]

I don't heavy haul nor own anything that would need it. Once the machine is on the truck, the truck driver is in possession and anything that happens is his responsibility. I'll help throw chains but won't hook them up. I'll help remove chains and that is as far as I'll go.

 

[sherryliu]

thanks

 

[Tyler d4c]

The pipeline that went through our area years ago hauled their crane and excavators sideways. Some of the cranes had 50-60' of boom hanging out the back. Small towns around let many things happen that wouldn't in a city.

Funny you say that Dad always talks about when Coonies moved from mineral point to dunlo they drove the wheel loaders and trucks. The dozer where moved in one chunk with a guy on the hood picking up wires. I bet there where D11s too.

 

[terex herder]

CM's picture of the hoe with the boom through the overpass deck happened near Hays, Kansas on I70.

 

[DGODGR]

When I bought my Towmaster T-50 trailer (a pintle hitch deck-over) it had something that I thought was unusual on it. It had a safety sticker on the side of the frame showing how to, and how not to, load an excavator. The sticker showed one excavator on the trailer with a red "X" through it, and another excavator with a green "check". The illustration with the red "X" had the excavator loaded boom pointed toward the back of the trailer and the one with the green "check" had it pointed toward the front of the trailer.
I have loaded them both ways. With boom forward there in a fair bit more weight on the trailer axles (a tridom in this case) and when loaded facing backwards one can get much more weight on the drivers of the truck. There was a point in which I thought that would possibly haul my excavator across state lines. The other states would not allow as much weight on the tridom as my home state. In fact, neither of the other states even recognized the tridom so I was only allowed 34k, and 36k pounds on the tridom in the respective other states (the same weight that they allowed for tandom axle sets). In order to make that happen I had to load the excavator all the way forward (with the grousers touching the head rail). I called Towmaster (the MFR) about this and they said it would be fine as that trailer was designed to handle as much as 25% of the load on the pintle. With the excavator loaded that far forward I was able to get 25% of the weight on the pintle, and the boom had to be pointed backwards because there was no trailer deck in front of the excavator. Again, Towmaster said it was fine despite the sticker.
BTW, we always load the excavator with the boom pointing towards the back, with the undercarriage pretty much centered over the tridom. That puts the boom mostly behind the tridom and rests on the beaver tail. It sticks so far off the back of the trailer that we have to use a flag on it. The trailer handles very well like this.

 

[suladas]

I have similar tag my hoe is barely on the trailer and the boom would smack the back of the dump box, be impossible to haul it boom forward and my trailer is 28' deck 6' beavertail it's not short. Also other thing I like is counterweight gets the road spray instead of front of hoe. No broken windows, salt on hydraulic cylinders in the winter, etc etc.

Makes sense it was rated for 25% tongue weight, when I checked on hitch for dump truck 80k lbs hitch rated for 20k lbs pin weight. I wonder how it would handle with that much though? I load mine so tridems are at max legal weight so only about 13000lbs on truck depending if i'm carrying an extra attachment or not, so about 20% pin weight.

 

[Andrew_D]

I haul mine facing forward. But my neck is wide so I can lay the stick down between the I-beams. It's lower than the top of my KW bunk.

Andrew