How NOT to load an equipment trailer. What 99% of People don't know

all right guys we got a really full day today because i'm going to walk you through how we hook up to a trailer put equipment on it balance the load and we're going to show you how we use a bobcat when we're in the forward position we're going to take it off we're going gonna load the bobcat bass backwards we're gonna show you how that looks we're gonna also show you how to pull yourself out of a trouble situation if you find yourself in one and how to identify all the potential trouble spots before you actually get down the road we're going to show you how not to load a trailer the things that are going to lead you to problems and issues and these are things that i'm going to be doing for you guys as if you were one of my own crew members whether you decide to use these techniques or not is on you and if you do decide to use any of the techniques that i'm going to show you today and you get yourself in trouble that's also on you because i'm not asking you to do that so let's get started now the first thing we're going to do is hook up to the trailer everything we do is preferably a two-man operation and the reason that is safety checks uh just one guy double checks the work of another guy now you're gonna have a choice of hitch types or you may not have a choice of hitch types but there's two different distinct kind of hitches that you're gonna see this one is a pintle hitch we always prefer pintle hitches because of one simple fast reason visual inspection it's easier to see exactly if your hitch is hooked up connected and solid when you've got a wide open area to take a look at it okay so i've got the jack raised up as high as i can get it but i still have one more pin left so let's get that brought all the way up [Music] i always double check this is an important part of what i stress to my guys is double checking with the pencil i put it all the way down now we need to secure the kataki to it pin you call it what you want but this hitch is not done until that pin is through it and i've double checked it now here's your other hitch option we don't use these but if you do make sure that you pin underneath there latches properly problem why we don't use these is because you can't you can't see it and i like to be able to walk by a trailer and look down at any moment and go pin latched good but we're not ready yet there's still two other things that you've got to connect you've still got to get your safety brakes and your lights hooked up to your trailer and bird nest your chains now bird nesting your chains may not be appropriate in all different areas so make sure that you know whether you br you can bird nest or not bird dust this is the electrical safety brake right here okay i just pulled it i'm gonna run it through that brakes are activated right now so now what i've done is i've looped it through in an ideal world i'm going to keep the safety chain up and out of the way as you just run that through you can also run your power cord through if you've got a big enough pin there to allow it to support and that'll keep everything out of the way so we've got our chains hooked up the normal way now i'm going to bird nest them which basically is just crossing them over and they it acts as a catch in case your trailer does come disconnected the hitch can fall down between the chains and get caught in between them before it falls onto the road okay before anything else happens you have a second person in your company double check to see how you've got this hooked up if you don't have that option just take the time and physically touch all of your connections to make sure that everything is the way you want it this is an important step of the process because when you're going down the road if you have a failure in any one of those points it can add up really fast like a big giant snowball going down the road you don't want to load going down a hill pass backwards and you don't want to load going forward down a hill you want to be on flat level ground as possible so choose where you're going to put your load on is really a critical element of it okay we've got the truck and trailer about as flat and level as we have for the options here but before we even put anything on it the trailer deck needs to be cleared you don't run a trailer down the road with mud dirt debris and worse yet rocks because they'll bounce off and they'll hit somebody's car so you clean your trailer top before you load it you clean your tracks of your equipment before you put it up and a clean trailer looks good to the d.o.t as well so our truck is hooked up it's in park we're on flat level ground but by no means are we ready to load here's where the second person gets really important if you have the option of having a second person on site have them go into the truck turn the truck on fully operational put the truck in neutral and hold their foot on the brake and the reason that you want to do it in that order is because if you just leave the truck in park you're depending on that one gear in the transmission to hold everything in place your transmission is not designed for that your brakes are designed for that your brakes are designed to stop and hold your vehicle so utilize the brakes not the transmission by jumping in the truck and putting it in neutral you've taken the stress off from the transmission by having someone hold their foot on the brakes you're activating the brakes of the truck as well as the brakes of the trailer so everything is now locked together you're gonna less likely go down the hill bass backwards but you're not always going to have that second person available so here's what i'm going to recommend you do if you're by yourself and you're loading don't rely on that transmission to hold you start the truck up put stomp on that parking brake all the way to the floor get the truck so that everything is locked up tight then chalk the wheels chalk your wheels of your trailer both sides chalk the wheels of your truck both sides then jump back into the truck and then put it into park as well and you're gonna be like wait a minute my kid you just told me not to look the last thing i want you guys doing is taking a ride on a trailer while the truck is out of control careening down a hill if you've got any years of experience loading trailers that situation does happen once in a while and this is what we found to be the best way to keep that from happening if you have the wheels chocked while you're is still in neutral okay with the parking brake fully depressed then by putting it in gear hopefully the brakes and the the chalks will absorb the impact before that gear in the transmission takes the full brunt so now you're distributing that load throughout the truck a little bit more versus just depending on one thing okay so we're loading by ourselves today so i've got both sides of the trailer chalked forward and backward and i always prefer to do both sides even though the trailer is more likely to roll down that hill than it is to roll up that hill when you're initially loading a piece of equipment up the trailers gonna be likely to push forward on you and what happens is if it pushes forward even if it's going up a hill if it does decide to roll backwards it now has the ability to gain momentum that could potentially flop up and over a chalk so i like to keep that trailer locked as tight as possible not allowing it to roll forward or backward so both sides are there and i also have the the truck locked in next up we're going to show you the wrong way to load the trailer and then the worst wrong way to load the trailer and then we're going to get it just right and the reason i put it in that order specifically is because the first thing we're going to do is we're going to load it too heavy toward the front of the truck we're just going to show you what that looks like and then the second scenario we're going to load it too heavy in the back of the truck and this is the more dangerous situation to you guys the drivers so let's uh let's do it wrong and then let's do it right now before we even get going down the road before we even load up we uh we look at where the majority of the weight on the piece of equipment that we're going to be loading is on a skid loader the majority of your weight is in this area right here so what we want to do is we want to get that area right there centered over our axles we want this trailer and truck to balance beautifully if at any time when you're going down the road if it feels like the front nose of your truck is too high up in the air that means you've got too much weight forward of the axles and that's pushing down on the tongue which lifts up the front nose of your truck when you get it balanced everything should flow you still will feel the load of the truck going down the road you feel the load of the trailer going down the road but at no point should it feel like this and especially like this so let's do it the right way let's do it the wrong way twice [Music] first thing we're gonna do is go too far forward and show you guys how that looks see i'm at just a slight incline and that's making my machine wanna go bass awkward so being perfectly level has a big impact on how you load so hopefully you guys can see that see how that truck just squatted like that and also as you notice i'm not perfectly level so loading my skid loader this way driving it up was a little bit tricky that should be another indicator that not all of your conditions are perfectly met because when you load something it should not be tricky you can see the back end is squished down you can see it you can see my front end is up in the air which is going to make me feel like i'm doing a permanent wheelie and that's one of the signs that i'm not right let's break her back too far backwards all right let's make it worse what yeah let's make it loose another indicator that i'm not loaded right are my tires and this is where having the trailer perfectly flat makes a big difference i'm not totally right here guys but look at these trailers you see how this back wheel is squished more than that wheel that's because my mass is too far backwards over the back of the trailer now this is a more dangerous situation you guys can get yourself into if you do get yourself into the situation where you have it improperly loaded and you're going down the road she starts i'm going to call it purposing i call the death wobble in another video i was corrected that's a jeep thing it doesn't matter because the trouble is all the same you guys what happens is as you're going down the road your trailer is going to start to do this sort of thing and you usually only have three swings before it takes your truck and flips your trailer right along with it so it goes one two three and you're over it's not a fun ride i've seen it in person followed behind a truck watched it flipped and rolled and literally counted one two three boom there's an easy way to get out of it and that's by applying your trailer brakes alone do not mash on your foot pedal your first instinct is going to be to mash on your foot pedal and that's better than nothing but that's not the solution the solution that we found inside is to grab that trailer brake controller and hit it as hard as you can just slam on the trailer brakes don't touch your your truck brakes slam on your trailer brakes and that will your trailer will slow down and keep everything to slow your truck down and then you hit your truck brakes so you smash your trailer brakes and then smash your truck brakes just a couple moments aft let your trailer brakes activate first what will happen is if you hit the foot pedal first your truck will typically activate its brakes faster than your trailer well now your truck is getting pushed at this point that's why it's going into this purposing effect if you activate those brakes the trailer is going to push the truck even more but if you activate the trailer brakes the trailer is no longer pulling the truck and you can activate the truck brakes and hopefully come to a nice smooth ride on the side of the road and then go change your pants let's find the sweet spot on this one now so here's the thing i want you guys aiming on this camera as i'm going forward and backward right now well i'm looking at my trailer right i'm watching my truck settle i'm watching it settle right to where i think it should be and then i'll get out and i'll double check as i'm backing up see that truck lifting up right where my center of my weight is over my tires i'm just getting that feet and i'd rather air on the side of going a little heavy on the top than behind it so it wasn't a big move now remember you are balancing this entire combination so i always get out i never just go oh i've done this you know three thousand times this is right i always get out and i look because every time can be a little bit different there's the weight i feel comfortable about this load here's my the majority of my weight right between my two axles a little bit is just behind it but more is in front of it i would chain down and go down the road like this my two tires look very comparable a little bit more on the back end but now i'm compensating because i've got the trailer not perfectly level so now let's let's do it pass backwards let's put the machine on the other way now this truck is just crying at this point because all of the weight of this is in front of the back axles you can actually see the chains dragging on the ground at this point that should be another big indicator that maybe something's not quite right with this load the back end is squashed down my front end is riding a wheelie this is not a good scenario let's do the worst scenario i mean we're here let's just do the worst case scenario let's let's show it all right i think this is an important one to show for a number of reasons remember the bulk of our machine the weight we were concerned about having centered over the rear axles well we are but now we've got too much weight over the back of the truck look at all the chains have come up in this case even though you may be thinking but my weight is right yeah but the remaining weight is the wrong way this is a dangerous situation going down the road this machine should be repositioned differently let's do it let's do it right let's put it where i think my logic is the majority of the weight is this way we're actually getting the rest of the weight of the machine over those center axles and then we have just enough behind the axles to counter affect some of the weight of the machine on the tr on the tongue this is not what i i don't this isn't my as comfortable going down the road like this but some of you guys are and if you do load your equipment like this when you're going down the road if you have an exhaust like this with the turbo you may want to plug that up because i know some equipment the turbo when it's going into the wind will rotate bass backwards if some equipment will do this we'll rotate bass backwards and burn it out okay so the next scenario is you don't have a light dirt bucket on you got something heavy maybe it could be forks and a pallet of block i don't care pick any scenario you want i just grabbed a power rate because it's big bulky and heavy let's load it up and see how that changes the balance of the machine and where we position it make sure that you take the weight of your attachment into your calculation because that will ultimately throw the balance of your entire system off pretty close to where we were before but because i got that heavy attachment on front my weight is just a tiny bit more behind the tires again i'm just making sure i'm balanced and if at any point i'm going down the road it don't feel right i'll pull over and i'll fix it all right you guys well i hope this video has been helpful for you but we've got more coming down the pipeline in fact in the next video we're going to show you different ways to chain down your equipment one of the ways we show you is what i know is fairly legal which is the four-point tie-down but we're also going to show you a couple different ways you can get by in a pinch if you don't have all the necessary chains and binders you find yourself out on a job site and you need to get moving down the road well there's a couple different ways you can do it is it perfectly legal i don't know and on one last note i want to leave you with you can see i've changed trucks i mean i've changed trailers and what that means is my balance point on my entire system has also changed so as you guys are going through the steps of balancing your loads make sure that you don't get too comfortable and complacent with one trailer and expect a second or a different trailer to act the same way as the first trailer because every trailer is going to have its own personality i know that sounds weird but if you guys have driven a truck in a trailer you know exactly what i'm talking about and that's all we got for you today guys i hope this video is mama kitty approved hi monica who's a good boy mama kitty's a boy yup hi mama kitty i hope you guys approve god bless go get em you guys we'll see on another one