Water Well Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/515025
• Working load limits of each tiedown • Length and weight of your cargo • Aggregate load limit. "I had a [Department of Transportation] officer tell me once if you could take a truck, turn it upside down, and some- thing falls out, that's considered a securement violation," Wright says. That means everything must be contained and nothing could leak, spill, blow off the vehicle, fall from it or through it. "A lot of guys will have a bucket of bits or tooling in an open box," Wright says. "That needs to be in a storage box with a lid that's strapped down." The other common mistake is not using enough tiedowns for the cargo. "They don't know there's a length and weight require- ment," says Roger Renner, MGWC, president of E.H. Renner and Sons Inc. in Elk River, Minnesota. "You have to satisfy both." If you miss a requirement, the officer could put you out of service until everything is properly secured. "That means if you don't have enough tiedowns, you can't move until you get another strap on there," Renner says. "If you don't have it with you, that costs travel time and labor for someone else to drive a strap out to the driver." How many straps you need The number of tiedowns required for cargo on commercial motor vehicles depends on whether the cargo is prevented from moving forward, the length and weight of the cargo, and the strength of the tiedowns. If the cargo is not prevented from moving forward by a bulkhead, headerboard, or other cargo and is 5 feet or less and 1100 pounds or less, one tiedown is required. An additional tiedown is required if the cargo is less than 5 feet but more than 1100 pounds or if it's more than 5 feet but less than 10 feet regardless of the cargo's weight. If the cargo is greater than 10 feet, two tiedowns are re- quired in the first 10 feet and another tiedown is needed every 10 feet or part thereof. So, if your cargo is 12 feet long and 1320 pounds, you need a total of three tiedowns. If the cargo is prevented from moving forward, you need one tiedown every 10 feet or part thereof. So, if your 12-feet- long, 1320-pound cargo is pushed up against a headerboard, then you would need two tiedowns. National Exploration encourages its employees to use a minimum of two tiedowns per item. When an item is more than 10 feet, they add an additional tiedown every 10 feet when an item is more than 10 feet long, Wright says. "It's a good rule of thumb," he says. "If you don't know how long something is or how much something weighs, you get pulled over, and the officer sees you have one tiedown when you need two, that's a securement violation." In addition to length and weight, the strength of your tiedowns affects the number of them you'll need to secure the load. According to the FMCSA, the securement system's aggregate working load limit must be at least 50% of the weight of the cargo you're securing. To calculate the aggregate working load: add half of the working load limits for each tiedown that goes from an anchor point on your vehicle to an anchor point on the cargo to half of the working load limit of each tiedown that goes from an anchor point on the vehicle and around, over, or through the cargo. The working load limit is usually assigned by the manufac- turer. For any tiedown, the working load limit is the working load limit of any of its parts or anchor point, whichever is less. TIEDOWNS from page 27 "When you hit those brakes and feel yourself coming forward in the seat belt, your load is doing the same thing ; it's coming forward." waterwelljournal.com 28 June 2015 WWJ Bungee cords do not count as a strap when measuring the number of tiedowns needed for cargo on a commerical motor vehicle. Strength of tiedown, along with length and weight, affect the number of tiedowns needed to secure a load.