The Forestry Forum

Woodhauler and a few others will appreciate this one. When I arrived home yesterday afternoon a super B was stopped in the neighbor's drive way, thought nothing of it as they regularly pick up milk. It was still sitting there engine running and lights on after dark when a heavy tow showed up. Hmm, maybe dropped the clutch or a drive shaft.
We then realized they were pulling the truck and both trailers so I wandered down to see what was going on. Turns out he had dropped an empty and picked up a loaded trailer, only problem was the lead was empty. He had stopped to let a car go by on the road, the drive is greasy so that is where he sat. They tried turning right but couldn't swing wide enough to avoid dropping the loaded trailer off the drive and rolling it. They backed up and tried turning left, now the trailer was dangerously close to the service pole.
Now came the head scratching. What to do? He couldn't back up as the rear trailer was going the wrong way.  I asked why they didn't split the trailers. No dolly pads was the answer. I didn't ask what they had been sitting on in the yard, just stepped back and watched. Finally the driver's boss ran back to town for pads and chocks. They unhooked the rear trailer, pulled onto the road and dropped the lead. The driver now chained up and backed under the other one. Why didn't he do that two hours before? Probably didn't want to get his hands dirty. ::) He would have been fine if he had stopped and thought things through before panicking and making a bad situation worse.

Why did he ever hook to a loaded trailer with an empty lead trailer. It is better that he was stuck in a driveway than wrapping it up out on the road.

That was my first question, I assumed he had loaded. The route had been changed due to time constraints, he dropped an empty and picked up before reaching his original destination and swapping the lead. You're right, it was not a good decision especially since this guy has limited B experience.