More Load And Road Photos

Welcome to my latest collection of flatbed load and road photos. I have just came home from another rounds of hauling loads around our country and took a few interesting photos to share. The hauling of hazmat materials on a flatbed can be extremely dangerous, I wanted you to see for yourself some of these.

Note the v-boards on these loose-loaded drums. Not as safe as I would like, but I arrived intact none-the-less. Criss-crossed straps over front and back, and a toeboard at each end of the drums. All of this is required when hauling hazmat. The load is required to not move in any direction.

The next photos are from the Cooke City highway heading to the Montana gate to Yellowstone Park. I was contracted to pick up some atv and snowmobile shipping frames for Polaris Co.

The load was actually in Cooke City Montana, the road is not as suitable for full size 18 wheeler traffic as I would have hoped. 25 mph double switchback roads, extreme grades and no room for error.

I stopped near the top at a rest area and took these, I even got a bird in flight who was below where I was.

There was still a lot of snow for the first part of June 2011. The snows were still deep and I will share those photos here so you can see what the Montana mountains can hold even into June and July.

Good snowpack, but not a record. There used to be more in decades past, but you could not tell that to the folks who have already lost their homes due to Clark Fork River flooding just up north of this location of these photos.

 

 

 

It’s a long way down if I mess up. The road was very long and slow to climb. There was not much room for error, but the scenery was great!

I had emptied out in Wyoming when a call had come in asking me to go to pick up this load. I made it in and out safely, but you can see it was a lot of concentration to keep my truck and trailer where it needed to be. The double switchbacks were very slow and a bit hairy. But no problem, I am from Montana and this is normal driving for some locations for freight.

I would not suggest a brand new driver go in on this road. I would suggest having a bit more experience driving before taking your truck up here. Precision cornering was a must. The load was not that heavy overall, but it was tall and could weave some in those corners..

Make sure you have lots of straps on this type of load and they are tight as they can be and still protect the load. Make sure the frames are free of sharp corners on the metal edges, you don’t want to cut a strap on this road or any other for that matter.

 

Jim