Tie it down you dumb $(%*^&#@

[smumfor]

Well the other night I'm on my way home heading down US Rt295 in the middle lane heading for the high speed lane. Well next thing I see is a white 5 gallon bucket drop off the tailgate of an old Ford $#I+ box dark blue pickup truck. We are doing about 70 and there are cars on both sides of me. Well needless to say I hit it hard and as it fly's about 30 or so feet in front of the car in the right lane then he hits it. Well I had the cover on it when I hit it but now it's about half full of white joint compound and ..SPLAT! Then I pull off the highway and check out the front of my car and .. well… couple of cracks on each side of the lamp but not as bad as I thought.



… So I head home again across the Buckman Bridge and I start noticing things on the side of the bridge and road.. a couch, ladder, mattress, several shoes and chair cushions and a crowbar….. The thing I don’t see is any rope or tie downs…. Are People so dumb that they don’t have the brains to tie things down? Well.. I guess so .. Billy Jo Jim Bob helps Mary Sue Beaufort move to her new apartment and drops the Couch on the highway!!!!

WOW ..No points for him tonight….

SO.. Is it just me here in Jacksonville, Fl or is this happening someplace else….

Scott

[kramlavud]

Not just Florida, Metro DC as well. I avoid following any truck as much as possible. Especially those with several stacked ladders. Recently saw an aluminum ladder in the middle of I495. Inagine the damage this can cause if it hits you.
regards

[Pete Geither]

Originally Posted by kramlavud

Not just Florida, Metro DC as well. I avoid following any truck as much as possible. Especially those with several stacked ladders. Recently saw an aluminum ladder in the middle of I495. Inagine the damage this can cause if it hits you.
regards

Also a good reason to stay away from those areas on a motorcycle.

[Jim Anderson]

I remember seeing a car with a couple of 4x8 sheets of paneling on top with the driver and passenger holding on to them with their hands




No they weren't able to hang on to them

[John Doe]

I have a happy story to report. When I was in college, I was boating under the Cooper River bridge in Chas, SC. As I opened a tallboy and as I looked wistfully at the wake of the massive nuclear sub passing by, I noticed something floating from the heavens--it was fluttering down, then smacked the water. I motored over and discovered my brand new Obrien kneeboard, which had obviously flown out of someone's boat or pickup because it wasn't properly stowed. That was......17 years ago, and I still use it on occasion.

[sfloriII]

Maybe we're all guilty at one time or another.

A couple years ago I bought a living room set of furniture from a friend. We tied both chairs and a couch securely in the back of a borrowed pick-up truck.

Then we headed down the highway to my place. I followed as my friend drove the truck.

To my dismay, as we approached 50 mph or so, the couch came lose from the wind and flipped up and out from the bed of the truck. It literally flew through the air, flipped once, and crashed on the street in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes and swerved to the emergency lane to avoid hitting it. My buddy realized what happend and stopped about a quarter mile ahead in the emergency lane.

I ran up to the couch and dragged it to the side of the road. Luckily no other drivers were around at the time, so no one had an accident or hit my new couch. An 18 wheeler a bit behind me stopped to prevent anyone else to drive by while we cleared the road of my couch.

The couch appeared pretty much okay, with only a small tear in one side (which faces a wall in my living room). Man! was I lucky.

Lesson learned: make damn sure you really know your stuff is securely tied down. The furniture is so light that the wind from traveling was simply too much for the ropes and that's what caused the flying couch.

[Lebenz]

During the summer of 1978, while moving a bunch of stuff, my folks gave me what was then a big screen TV set. It was about 26” and in a nice wood cabinet. Me and a buddy put it in the back of his dad’s pickup truck, placed against the front of the bed. We were only moving the TV about 10 blocks and didn’t tie it down. Well, while pulling away from a stop sign, the TV slid to the back of the bed, and naturally there was no tail gate, so it slid off the truck and onto the pavement. The impact tore off some of the wood trim, and separated the top. Plus the tube and electronics were shifted about an inch to the right. We loaded the TV back onto the truck and took it to its destination. Once there, I decided to plug it in, mostly to watch the sparks fly. To the amazement of myself and my buddy, the TV worked! I ended up putting the top together again and a few years later the TV was transported about 200 miles where it was in service for about 3 years until a house mate broke the CRT. The TV was a Zenith.

[sfloriII]

(off-topic)

Reminds me of what a television producer I know did once at a studio where I frequently work.

He was leaving the studio after talking to the clients when he decided to move the 20" Sony monitor we had in on a cart in the middle of the studio. When the cart got stuck on a cable, he simply pushed a little harder. Of course the entire cart tipped over and the television crashed onto the cement floor face down.

To our amazement it actually powered up! But the impact killed the monitor and all the colors were garbled.

One reason why television producers have no purpose touching stuff in studios!

[peragro]

You get a nice healthy sized ticket for an unsecured load in CA. Saw a guy on the way to the dump get popped for that the other day; all kinds of leafy debris falling from his truck...

[azimuth]

I lost a recently purchased 44oz soda that I had placed on my roof to open the door prior to boarding my vehicle. Imagine my disappointment at reaching to quench my lust for sucrose laden caffeine nectar only to discover an empty holder and a telling sticky brown hued trail down my back windows........

[waybomb]

I liked the Man Show skitt with the baby seat and accompanying life-like baby doll left on top of the roof of a SUV in a parking lot as the SUV unwittingly pulls away with the "baby" on top. Funny, very funny.

[iwrock]

Wow. My buddy and I were moving a couch from his house to mine. As we pulled out into the street, he decided it would be cool to dump the clutch. Well, I didnt tie it down, because it was 4 blocks. The damn thing flew out of the back.

Well needless to say, The couch didnt get to its inteded destination. I yelled and screamed, but oh well, it was a free couch!

[ottothegreat]

My buddie and I were driving across nebraska towards utah in his new to him car, we had snowboards on top in the proper rack.Well you know how the wind is in nebraska,It lifted both boards still attached to the rack and part of the rain gutter up off the car and deposited it back into the roadway.We hopped out sooo fast,ran back 1000 feet or so and picked up our undamaged snowboards before any other traffic came.The wind was so strong that when I got my board,or wing if you will,it wanted to pick me up and throw me back into the road.

[Orkrist2]

Never drive behind construction or roofing trucks at the end of the day. Too many beers and too many ladders left untied. I did roofing for a while many years ago, and I used to finish the day by watching the highway off the job site. the other roofing companies and construction companies pobviously hit the brews before they cleaned up the site. You could just watch the ladders fall of and the cars behind drive over them.

[catmandoo62]

this is why you tie stuff down because it could come back to haunt you.about 15yrs ago we loaded down the pickup and headed down to the des moines swap meet.buddy was a farmer and had a stock rack that stuck up above the cab,and we were loaded.got down to the swap meet fine didn't do to bad for the day.we go to leave figure we sold about half the stuff so just threw stuff in,well on the way home about 15 miles from the swap meet cruising down the interstate a semi passes us and pulls over in front of us and about 2 miles later out from under his truck comes a white back of a rear car seat to which we had no choice but to run over,we laugh are butts off about how that looked just like the white back seat we had in the back,and how those idiots are gonna be pissed when they get home and have half a seat well when we get home and unload WE are the idiots missing the back to our white seat,the seat must have flown out of the pickup and got stuck to the semi,long enough for him to pass us then it fell off and we ran our own seat over,god is so cruel sometimes