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Heavy hauler

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Unattended 4' slide down a concrete driveway

Our puller tractor driveway test Video

I thought some of you truckers (and trucker at hearts) would be interested in a big move we just made at work last week. We are in the process of building a $60 million dollar air seperation plant at work. The cold box (where most of the gas seperation takes place) was delivered on a large boat to the harbor (Lake Erie) all the way from Italy. It arrived before the ice set in and sat at the dock all winter until last week. A company out of Canada was contracted to move the cold box which was delivered in 2 sections.

Here is the trailer they brought to move the sections from the dock to the site, approximately 3 miles.
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Would have loved to talk to the driver about this rig but I never got the chance to. All I can say is that sucker was turned up! I'm sure this rig is probably familiar to some of you. I'd really like to know what powerplant was in it, whatever it was was definitely pushing some serious horsepower.

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They had over 12k lbs in weights over the drive axles for traction.

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Lower section of the cold box at the dock.

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Here she is on the road. It took almost 10 hours to move the 3 miles from the dock to the site. Low overhead lines had to be moved, street lights taken down, a section of guard rail removed in order to make a corner. Lots and lots of prepping went into making the move as smooth as possible but they still struggled with virtually every corner due to the shear size and weight of the unit. The first section is over 18 ft in diameter, 145 ft long, and weighs in at 756,000 lbs. Even with the number of axles under the trailer they still suffered 2 different blow outs and bent one of the pivot axles. On several occasions they had to hook a second truck up to the first rig and twice they had 3 trucks pulling together to get the cold box up the on ramp of the highway and again when they cut a corner too tight and 4 axles dropped off the pavement (and out of sight). This is also when they bent one of the axles and blew a tire.
It was pretty impressive seeing such a massive object being moved.

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I saw a similar trailer here in TN once. I don't remember what they were moving, but they made a 90* turn where I was at. I just KNEW they wouldn't make that turn until I start noticing ALL the wheels under the trailer starting to turn, at different angles! It was amazing.
 
Not 100% sure about a Cummins under the hood, but I do see what looks like Apex Red!

Truck looks very similar to those used to move drilling rigs here in WY.
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Mad Max looking truck indeed!!

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Nice!! He might be over his GVW/GCW empty!! I feel better now when I am over a few 1000 lbs:p

Nick
 
I saw a similar trailer here in TN once. I don't remember what they were moving, but they made a 90* turn where I was at. I just KNEW they wouldn't make that turn until I start noticing ALL the wheels under the trailer starting to turn, at different angles! It was amazing.

It is a sight to see for sure. In one of the pictures you can see a guy standing at the front of the trailer, he is working the controls that turn the axles. They can either crab the trailer or turn them all in the same direction for a tight (as possible) turning radius. If you saw the route they took to get there, you'd never believe they made it at close to 170ft from nose of truck to tail.
 
Not 100% sure about a Cummins under the hood, but I do see what looks like Apex Red!

Truck looks very similar to those used to move drilling rigs here in WY.
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Mad Max looking truck indeed!!

I saw the red too, but wasn't sure if any other truck engines are painted a similar color....all I know is the turbo sounded loud and nasty when they loaded that ol girl up :cool:
 
A quick few shots of the crane that off loaded it and will be setting it in place Its a Manitowoc 18000 crawler with 260 ft of boom (in this configuration, but can be configured with 400 ft). Its got 492,000 lbs of counterweight and an additional 320,000 lbs of carbody ballast which is the weight hanging off the back of the crane.

I'll post up some more specs later, here's a few pictures for now.

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Pictures aren't the greatest as they as are all taken with my cell phone.

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But then you'd have to deal with the snow!

Not sure if you noticed the ice on the lake in the back ground in the pictures, but that was taken late April, and Buffalo typically gets worse weather than we do.
 
Nice pictures!!! First chance that I have had to respond, just plain busy.

My concern with these is brakes, I know that there are plenty of them but the air pressure volume required would tax a normal truck's air compressor. They must have several large reservoirs on the lowbed itself.
For example a common truck air compressor is rated for 500 - 550 CFM. Some have the optional 750 CFM compressors.
So there is plenty of air for a twin screw tractor and tri-axle trailer as is commonly run up here.
Now I count 14 axles on that thing without adding the power unit. The biggest air compressor option that I have seen for a truck is dual 750 CFM units coupled nose to ***. So even with that pumping away you would not be able to pump the foot pedal very many times to get low on air with 18 braked axles total. Just the first thing that popped into my mind was getting it stopped......

Notice that the tractor is a tri-drive, we have several of those running around up here. You could make a quad drive by simply adding another forward axle with a thru shaft. There is a point where you simply could not turn under power unless you had some lift axle action.

Those are nice trucks.

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Yes, a DEF tank for sure. I can't get my perspective needed to tell if the drive axles are 10 feet wide, it almost looks like they are from the width of the headache rack / fuel tank step combo on it.

That model of Kenworth is a C-500 from what I know about them. Very custom platform for a road truck or heavy hauler. Western Star has a similar platform that can be customized for specialized applications as well. I have a CAD drawing of a tri-drive dual steer axle Western Star that we have ordered for a wrecker / recovery vehicle. I will find it in a while.
 
I'm not sure on the 10' thing but it never stuck out at me that it seemed wider than normal. Here is a frontal shot of it.

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That's a good point on the brakes, I never even gave it a thought. Any possibility of a hydraulic assist being all the wheels are hydraulic steered? I noticed a pump running when I walked by the trailer once and I assumed it was a hyd pump/reservoir. With all those wheels being able to turn its gotta take a pretty substantial amount of volume.

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I see one way they add braking capabilities..........hook up air from the extra trucks that get attached...note hook-ups...


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