Big Tow

[JTFormula]

Yesterday at 11:30am I get a phone call from my buddy Goose. He broke down in his Freightliner M2 4 Car Carrier 3 miles from my home and asked if I could bring a couple gallons of water (leaking radiator), starting fluid, and a jump box. He said its been knocking since yesterday but the company mechanic said just keep driving it until something happens. Well I guess yesterday was the day. I get there and his bosses brother was there also with water. We hooked up the jumper, squirted some fluid into the air cleaner and it fired up, stumbled and stalled. We did that two more times and at that point we determined its not getting fuel, I didn't have any tools or a filter wrench and he didn't want to bother trying to figure it out. He said he did what the mechanic said to do, drive it until it dies. I could have run back home for my filter wrenches and see if there was water in the fuel or something but he didn't want to inconvenience me. You kidding? I was couped up in my house for 6 days with no TV or internet. This was entertainment. So they called a couple wreckers and got someone to come. Tow bill, $450 to go about 30 miles. I took some pictures, because I know you guys like pictures.

Broken Down

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Hooking up and checking height

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Just when they were finishing the hookup, another tow company showed up. Apparently when Goose's outfit called for an ETA and price, the tow company decided just to dispatch before getting the OK from the carrier company to go and pick it up.

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Because of the height with the car on top, they had to flat tow it. Height before tow, 13'3" - after hookup 13'7". Two bridges were along the route back to his lot. One 14'0" and one 13'9" - They avoided the 13'9" one since they were running real close.

[umodelnut]

Aww Man a Paccar? Ewww, haha, cool story JT.

[vision386]

AND a freightliner! now i don't feel good either!..................................Mark

[Terry T]

Does this make you guys feel a bit better?

[vision386]

Does this make you guys feel a bit better?

Yup! better already,this is as it should be!...................................Mark

[RowdyRebel]

BOTH them wreckers was overkill....back when I was towing stuff, we would have showed up with a single screw 4900 cornbinder with a DT466 and 6+ transmission. Hell, we'd tow an 80,000 T/T with that little "medium duty" truck. Granted we were almost always overweight on the drive axle...but we never crossed any scales.

Personally, I'm not a fan of big, fancy, over-the-top wreckers...because those aren't cheap, and whoever is on the hook is helping to make the truck note on the thing.

[JTFormula]

That Taylor's truck has been around the block a few times and it shows. It's paid for itself several times over. When I used to tow 15 years ago they had that truck.

One thing I learned is its alway better to bring more truck than less when it comes to towing. Years ago the company I used to work for we had a HD3500 Chevy flatbed. The driveshaft came out of the truck as I was going down the Parkway. The u joints gave out on the axle. Grones out of Toms River came out with an R Mack wrecker for that truck. That was overkill. An HD wrecker for a truck thats light duty. They towed us off the parkway back to their lot and we towed it back to our shop with a Ford F450 Super Duty with a Holmes 480 on the sling.

[Terry T]

The Mack is the truck I use to drive. It has a Century 5030 backend that is a 25 ton unit (equal to a Holmes 750) and a 30K under-reach. Hardly overkill when you consider I could do everything that I needed to do with just that one truck. My little International S Series had a DT466 with a 5speed/2speed rearend and a Century 20 ton with a 12K under-reach and I did an empty Mack CL quad-axle dump with it one time and it was all it wanted to do. When you try to do too much without enough truck equipment gets damaged & people get hurt and sometimes die....

Note: One thing I would not do with that Mack was Volvo WG refuse trucks with the front mounted pump. It would require me to tow with my under-reach extened all the way out and that was too much weight on a fully extended stick to tow safely.

[Mike]

Makes me feel better now, so I can now eat my lunch knowing things are normal again.

mike

[Vladislav]

My heart is filled of better sence with Mack wrecker. And the weather lookes warmer.

Although I like that 3 axle FLD and glad to see you still have blue sky and no SNOW.

[other dog]

My heart is filled of better sence with Mack wrecker. And the weather lookes warmer.

Although I like that 3 axle FLD and glad to see you still have blue sky and no SNOW.

There's plenty of it still laying around in West Virginia though.