A hair raising sight

Several years ago, I was leaving the old threshers show at Antique Acres, north of Cedar Falls, Iowa. A light rain had come up and left, dampening everyone's spirits at the end of the show day. There was much hurrying to get to cars, etc..

On my way to my car I saw a fellow with a JD G unstyled puller loading. He had a single axle flatbed (no tilt) truck with three fairly wide planks (like bridge planks, maybe?) about 12-16 feet long lined up for the tricycle tractor and I saw him give the old G full throttle and charged up those plants a good speed. The front wheels were nearly at the top, on the truck deck, when his rear wheels started spinning on the planks. He quickly declutched and let the tractor roll down the planks backward and out onto the grass for quite a way, then engaged the clutch and charged at the planks again, this time with enough speed to get onto the truck deck and jam on the tractor brakes.

What if that spinning tractor half way up happen to slide side ways off the planks? The rig was at least 3-4 feet off the ground at the rear wheels.

He hurriedly chained the tractor down and took off for home before more rain came.

It still makes the few hairs I have left
wiggle when I remember that afternoon. Leo

Leo I think the key there is you said "several years ago" folks just did things different back then. when I look back (I am 76) I wonder how in the world did we not get killed. I have been around construction equipment, farm equipment all my life and know I have done some crazy things. For instance at probably 10 years old I would cry to go with my uncle , he had a mid sized oliver crawler. hauled it on a f6 ford flat bed two ton truck. He would lay down two cross tie blocks and make me sit in the seat and hold the brake, as he backed to the rear of the truck it would clear the ground in front. when he went off my head would almost hit the cab roof, remember doing that more than once. By the time I was 18 he had me driving a TD 24 IH pulling a 6 yard BE scrapper. Building pond levels it was nothing to have to turn down the levee to prevent turning the thing over.

I hate to say this but the old guy was a fool for trying that stunt. Yes it worked that time but you can bet one of the next times it want
and he will get seriously injured

(quoted from post at 19:21:57 07/22/19) I hate to say this but the old guy was a fool for trying that stunt. Yes it worked that time but you can bet one of the next times it want
and he will get seriously injured

Click to expand...

Yep, every year or 2 you hear about some old guy flipping a tractor on himself loading at a show or pull. You kinda know that they have done that for years and it finally caught up with em.

Rick

Brother in law store his vac case on the farm for a while when he was moving. Unloaded with no problems on some 2X12.When he went to load it both planks broke luckily he was only about a foot off the grown when it happened

Back in the 60's a couple brothers hauled their Massey 44 (I think) with a chevy
6 cylinder puller by backing the rear tires onto the bed rails of a 1/2 ton ford
pickup truck from a loading dock. I don't remember what held the front end of
the tractor up or how or even if they tied it down. The truck sure swayed when
they moved the truck.

The 1 that always made me walk away fast was the
ones that chained fence posts to wheels when
stuck.pin break,foot slip your dead.
I seen that as unsafe when i was 5,watched 2
brothers pull their H ihc out that way with their
8n ford holding the H front down

"sight"???? I don't see any "sight"/picture!!! Just a mental image in you mind. :roll:

I had a Ford 655 get sideways on the ramp of a tag trailer, none of these have enough weight in the front for this maneuver, trying to drive up the ramps to get onto the trailer. Some you would use the hoe to assist, carefully mind you. While loading, front got too light, no steering, and it just swung around and stopped. Really had me going, had to get out and take a minute, but then carefully got it straightened out and then loaded onto the deck. I have a 555C now, and if having to load onto a trailer like that, I have 2 2x2 18" concrete blocks I can put in the front bucket if need be, but then those need to be secured. Definitely need weight or a different kind of trailer.

I've got an experience that happened to me a little over a month ago that I'm going to share.
Was at a multi tractor auction that drug out all day long and was talking to two people at the auction that I'd never met before, just happened to be talking to them the whole time. They lived about four hours away from the auction site, so I knew they were after a specific tractor although they never told me which one and during the auction, I didn't ask. (Bidder paranoia, you know) I live a good hour away from this auction. I came to this auction without a trailer thinking that I'd come the next day to pick up any purchases.
It just turned out that I purchased a tractor that weighed 4,400 lbs. My tractor was one of the later items to sell, so I hung around to find out what tractor these two guys were going to bid on. They were bidding on one of the final tractors that sold, a tractor that weighed almost 15,000 lbs. For reasons I won't mention here, they didn't purchase the 15,000 tractor, but it wasn't because they didn't have the money for it. Anyway, the auction was over and I got a wild hair in my brain. Since their route home was close to where I lived, I asked them if they would give my purchase a ride to my place. They were glad to and I was happy because I wouldn't have to waste the next day retrieving my tractor. So I asked them where their trailer was and they pointed in the general area. I drove my tractor to the general area and they showed me a car trailer that had loose boards and cheap five-lug wheels.
Now I had no real worries with a 4,400 tractor getting a ride, but I had no idea how they were going to go four hours with a 15,000 lb. tractor on this trailer. I'm pretty sure the trailer would have broke an axle with this tractor being driven on it, much less the four hour ride, being pulled by a small 3/4 ton pickup. I'm pretty sure the tractor that they wanted would have been far too wise to even drive onto this trailer.
My tractor got home safe and that's all that mattered to me that day. But had they tried to load the 15,000 tractor on this trailer, I think I would have liked to sit back and watch.

This happened to a friends brother. He is lucky to be alive but last I heard was still having issues in the hospital.

At the local big tractor show a couple of years ago I watched as a guy loaded a JD A NF onto a trailer with 2 ramps which didn't move in and out, meaning the ramps width was fixed. He ran the NF up one ramp then the rears up, but halfway up one rear fell off the side of the ramp. The trailer was a bit higher than a car hauler and happened to also be leaning on unlevel ground to the side he fell off of. How it didn't roll over God only knows, I thought for sure I was watching his demise.

Maybe you don't have the wattage to come up with that mental picture...
The title was "A hair raising sight", not "A hair raising photo"....
Personally I thought he describe the event very well.

Seems to me that these places SHOULD have a ramp for loading and unloading. All it would take is some railroad ties, fill dirt, and a little gravel.