Truck 14, 1988 Dm888Sx

[Guest 45LMSWM]

Here are some pics of Conforti's 1988 DM888SX. Orginally a tandem axle tractor purchased new by Ambrosio & Sons of Jersey City, NJ. The truck was owned by Central Jersey Trucking & Rigging for a few years, until they sold it to its driver, Frank Conforti. Conforti stretched it and added the lift axle. It was repainted blue & white in 1998 or so.

All photos by David Pearson

Outside Flemington, NJ, winter of 2000(?)

This was my job for the day, move (3) Cat 627A scrapers from Flemington to Somerset. This was the third and last one.

Rear view.

One last pic.

-John

[mackcl96]

You say when it looked good,What does it look like now.

[Guest 45LMSWM]

You say when it looked good,What does it look like now.

It's pretty rough, unfortunately. Parts have been robbed off of it to keep some of the other trucks running. The headache rack is gone, fifth wheel ramps are all bent up, fifth wheel is gone. It has a new hood on it that was never painted(so its black & a little rusty). The rear fenders got all mangled up on a job. The grille guard and Mack emblem on the front of the radiator is gone. The interior is in really poor shape as well...Need I say more?(wow, the boss would be really pissed if he ever knew i was posting this!!!)

It's still the boss's baby and the first truck he ever owned, but it hasn't seen the road in over a year and is in desperate need of a freshening up. We've been talking about getting her in the shop for a rework, but so many projects and so little time.

-John

[daveigou]

What's under the hood?

[HK Trucking]

Don't you just love backing those scrapers up over the trailer wheels?

We've got a 623 and a 615 and that's a pain in the ass with our 108" wide triaxle trailer.

Is that a 120" wide 4 axle trailer you're running?

.

[Guest 45LMSWM]

What's under the hood?

Factory 350 2 Valve. 12 speed Mack mud stick, 18 front, 58 rears, 12x24 rubber on the steer and drives and 12x20 on the lift axle. It always seemed a bit under powered to me, but it got the job done. Had 105 ton(plus 71,000 lbs tare weight truck and trailer) on its back more than a few times with no trouble.

-John

[David]

John, How far out of square do the 4 axles on that trailer go when you make a turn loaded? Seems like that would real hard on the trailer and tires.

[Guest 45LMSWM]

Don't you just love backing those scrapers up over the trailer wheels?

We've got a 623 and a 615 and that's a pain in the ass with our 108" wide triaxle trailer.

Is that a 120" wide 4 axle trailer you're running?

.

The trailer is a 1970 Rogers with a 60 ton neck, 75 ton 10 foot wide drop side deck insert, and 80 ton Rogers 4-axle back end, which is only 8' wide, not 8'6". At the time, just about all of our Rogers trailers were modular and we used to mix and match everything. We had (5) 10 foot Rogers drop sides at one time, (3) 75 tonners, (1) 90 tonner, and (1) 100 tonner. We still have (3), one each 75, 90, & 100 tons capacity.

Moving scrapers around here was actually what I considered to be the best job going. With the exception of a few customers who took real good care of their equipment, just about every scraper in NJ had no brakes, so it took 4 guys to load one every time. One guy on the ground watching, one in the scraper steering, one guy in a dozer pushing and the 4th guy was in an excavator holding the scraper back against the rear push block so it wouldn't go off the end of the trailer. Plus 3 guys to help you chain down and at least one escort the whole trip. That was living! The ten foot bed just made it all that much easier.

-John

[Guest 45LMSWM]

John, How far out of square do the 4 axles on that trailer go when you make a turn loaded? Seems like that would real hard on the trailer and tires.

We've been running 4-axles on the trailers pretty much as an everyday practice since I started working there in 1996. He had just finished putting the 4th axle together for this trailer the day I started. We ran two like this with the small rubber (17.5s) for the longest time, and now we have one with 295/80R22.5s and 9 foot axles and another with 315/80R22.5s and 10 foot axles. It seems the ones with the 17.5s take the most abuse...we run them up to 5-axles in a row...the brakes, tires, and suspension all take a tremendous beating. They are pretty much maxed out on capacity all the time, too.

I think the suspension takes the most beating of anything. The tire wear is not so bad cause we rotate them all the time and we really try to go easy on the tires with making sharp turns, climbing curbs, etc. The trailers with the 17.5s always ate brakes, but the suspension wear is the roughest. The 80 tonner 4-axle back end has been completely rebuilt three times since I have been there, just to give you an idea.

-John

[Guest 45LMSWM]

David,

Here's a pic from "the archives" running 5 in a row under a 637.

-John

[HK Trucking]

The trailer is a 1970 Rogers with a 60 ton neck, 75 ton 10 foot wide drop side deck insert, and 80 ton Rogers 4-axle back end, which is only 8' wide, not 8'6". At the time, just about all of our Rogers trailers were modular and we used to mix and match everything. We had (5) 10 foot Rogers drop sides at one time, (3) 75 tonners, (1) 90 tonner, and (1) 100 tonner. We still have (3), one each 75, 90, & 100 tons capacity.

Moving scrapers around here was actually what I considered to be the best job going. With the exception of a few customers who took real good care of their equipment, just about every scraper in NJ had no brakes, so it took 4 guys to load one every time. One guy on the ground watching, one in the scraper steering, one guy in a dozer pushing and the 4th guy was in an excavator holding the scraper back against the rear push block so it wouldn't go off the end of the trailer. Plus 3 guys to help you chain down and at least one escort the whole trip. That was living! The ten foot bed just made it all that much easier.

-John

Our 623 & 615 have brakes, the boss is very fussy that way about maintaining the equipment,so we don't need an excavator against the push block to keep from "overshooting" the end of the trailer. We have a guy running the scraper and a spotter (the lowboy driver) at the rear of the trailer in view of the operator to guide the operator in getting the scraper centered as it backs up over the wheels. It's still a pain in the ass.

Our trailers aren't as heavy as yours, we've got a 60 ton Trail King triaxle 108" wide, a 60 ton Trail King triaxle 102" wide, and a 35 ton Trail King tandem axle 102" wide, all non ground bearing RGN's, all on air ride. The 60 ton 102" has all axles down all the time, the 108" has a liftable 3rd axle.

I'm a "lightweight" compared to you guys, the heaviest piece I've moved so far is a 480 Kobelco excavator, @ 110,000 lbs. machine weight, on the 108" trailer (with the outriggers & planks of course).

615 on the 60 ton 102" wide:

623 in the shop:

The 60 ton 108" wide last year right after rebuilding & repainting:

.

[David]

John, Thanks for posting the pictures. Do you use any of the "Wobble Wheels"? Tell Frank I still have a set of 1400R x24's for them.

[Guest 45LMSWM]

John, Thanks for posting the pictures. Do you use any of the "Wobble Wheels"? Tell Frank I still have a set of 1400R x24's for them.

David,

Only one of our 4 wobble wheels is road worthy, the 1951. That trailer probably made more money for its owners over its lifetime than any other lowboy trailer ever built. Up until very recently, that trailer was on the road two or three days a week, sometimes as much as 5 to 6. The new weight laws in NJ pretty much put and end to an almost 60 year service life for that trailer. These days, its basically just a show piece, though it ocassionally goes out for on-site work.

We have three other trailers and several tractors running 14x24 rubber. The only tires we will run are Michelin XVC or XMP 3-star radials. Let me know what you have and a price and I'll see if he is interested. We purchased a very large quantity of nearly new XVCs last year, over 100 tires in all, so we have a pretty good stock, but if the price is right, you never know.

-John