808pants
New member
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- Location
- Honolulu, HI
In doing some excavation on my steep hillside property, the only feasible place on my cramped steep sloping site to load my 5-ton has been on a dirt-and-gravel temporary driveway that runs sharply up from the narrow street below. With the truck backed up the driveway to amply clear the road below, I would run my loader from the excavation area above all of this, down the upper part of the driveway, and then let the load spill into the truck from the back. After a few loads it would get to the point where the loose material was reachable over the tailgate. From that point, I could use subsequent loads to shove on the whole thing, to pack the soil towards the front of the truck with each new load. Now, shoving new soil into a heavily-loaded dump truck that's pointed down my driveway, basically in line with my neighbor's front door, was never a favorite thing to do, but I'd always have the wheels curbed sharply into the hill, transmission in reverse, and handbrake set to the extreme. The truck never budged.
Until one day... I was confidently packing one of the last loads of soil onto the back of the bed, when the truck lurched forwards, and then stopped. And then repeated this. The lurching must have been from the load actually turning the engine over in reverse, as each cylinder reached a backwards compression peak and then 'went over the hump,' so to speak. The downhill lurches continued as I scrambled out of the loader, thinking I had better get in the truck and be ready to use air-assist brakes ASAP - but I knew that the air would take some time to build up and make the brakes useful. It was only then that I saw that a lazy tenant of a neighbor had parked his vehicle right in front of my lurching soil-laden truck. I was screaming at the top of my lungs for him to get out there and move it - before my M51 came down on his hatchback and crushed it in slow-mo - while I wildly heaved on huge rocks nearby in an adrenaline-fueled attempt to chock the wheels before this played out. Fortunately, he heard me and got up to the street in time to get his vehicle away, and by then I had wrestled a huge rock in under the front wheel, which seemed to stop the lurching and let me catch a breath.
I think this terrifying slippage had to do with the extra weight of rain-soaked soil, but I also later noticed that the handbrake drum happened to be situated right below a leak from the rusty dump bed, and it looked like a rivulet had fully soaked the drum and shoes with muddy rainwater from my soil load.
That was a bit more adventure than I care for in this excavation endeavor, and was a few years ago now. But since I have plans to do more of this work at some point, I am wondering if there are any bulletproof methods to absolutely stop a 5-ton from moving downslope (other than maybe sliding on locked-up tires, which no one could hope to do much about.) My temp driveway is too steep and irregular for anything like standard rubber wheel-chocks to do the trick - they'd just get run over unless they were gigantic, I think.
I was thinking about somehow using a load-binder and chain to join the two rear wheels at their closest approach, for example...or maybe secure one to the bed itself...but I would hope for a lighter-weight and less crude, potentially muddy method. A hydraulic line-lock, maybe...but not sure I trust the single-circuit brakes for this, either. Anyone?
--Dave
Until one day... I was confidently packing one of the last loads of soil onto the back of the bed, when the truck lurched forwards, and then stopped. And then repeated this. The lurching must have been from the load actually turning the engine over in reverse, as each cylinder reached a backwards compression peak and then 'went over the hump,' so to speak. The downhill lurches continued as I scrambled out of the loader, thinking I had better get in the truck and be ready to use air-assist brakes ASAP - but I knew that the air would take some time to build up and make the brakes useful. It was only then that I saw that a lazy tenant of a neighbor had parked his vehicle right in front of my lurching soil-laden truck. I was screaming at the top of my lungs for him to get out there and move it - before my M51 came down on his hatchback and crushed it in slow-mo - while I wildly heaved on huge rocks nearby in an adrenaline-fueled attempt to chock the wheels before this played out. Fortunately, he heard me and got up to the street in time to get his vehicle away, and by then I had wrestled a huge rock in under the front wheel, which seemed to stop the lurching and let me catch a breath.
I think this terrifying slippage had to do with the extra weight of rain-soaked soil, but I also later noticed that the handbrake drum happened to be situated right below a leak from the rusty dump bed, and it looked like a rivulet had fully soaked the drum and shoes with muddy rainwater from my soil load.
That was a bit more adventure than I care for in this excavation endeavor, and was a few years ago now. But since I have plans to do more of this work at some point, I am wondering if there are any bulletproof methods to absolutely stop a 5-ton from moving downslope (other than maybe sliding on locked-up tires, which no one could hope to do much about.) My temp driveway is too steep and irregular for anything like standard rubber wheel-chocks to do the trick - they'd just get run over unless they were gigantic, I think.
I was thinking about somehow using a load-binder and chain to join the two rear wheels at their closest approach, for example...or maybe secure one to the bed itself...but I would hope for a lighter-weight and less crude, potentially muddy method. A hydraulic line-lock, maybe...but not sure I trust the single-circuit brakes for this, either. Anyone?
--Dave
