Escorts?

G'day

In my recent tripping through WA I saw first hand how slack many of the escort vehicle operators were.

I had to call many up on UHF 40 to get load dimensions. Suffered poor hand signalling, failure to inform via UHF unless other heavy vehicles around and many were to busy chatting on UHF 40, although this did indicate something was about.

I did meet some doing it correctly but sadly the slack ones far outweighed the good ones.

Regards

Paul

Don’t know the rules exactly, but I know what you are talking about. It’s always an experience overtaking them when you are behind them you have got half the car on the gravel wile playing doge the white posts.

I have had a few where the cop’s are part of the escort team, a cop car will come up first way out in front of the load and basically run you off the road if you don’t pull off immediately followed by the escort then the load and rear escort.

If unsure I normally just do a call on the UHF to check if it is a pull over situation.

The only time I have ever been affected by them was on our trip from the Gold Coast to Sydney last year.... they were on the highway channell telling the truckies how wide and whereabouts they were etc.....

I though it depended on the amount of oversize. For small amounts just one escort, for wider loads escorts rear & front. Bigger again the escorts were more "in your face" and then bigger again qualified for cop escort.

We move a lot of loads up north i'll ask the question for you monday and see if i can get a better answer. The Autoclave you saw was probably one designed and procured, and installed by us.

Alan

know what you mean Davoe. Dunno what to expect half the time. Sometimes you wonder why they bothered cos it barely affects other road users. Other times it's like they're taxiing a 747 down the road, completely blocking it and there's nowhere for you to go.

It would save a lot of hassles if the escort vehicle displayed the width of the oncoming......simple digital light display on roof

Rash

you did get my attention for a while....!

In my opinion, wide load permits are too easily granted these days. I was caught behind a LL with a tank on (not the army type) The tank would have been 10mtrs in diameter and fully dressed with all it's fittings.
I was in the construction and mining industry for over 30yrs and when we wanted to build a tank or any other sort of plant, it would be brought to site piece small and assembled on site. We rarley had an oversize load delivered. You also see large dump trucks being transported to and from Perth for repair. We used to do all the repair work on the mine site

Davoe,

I did escort work for a couple years in a previous life. Since then they have to go through an acceditation process which would be a good thing. I took a lot of loads to Burrup in it's early days, many loads of pools to Darwin and several loads of machinery to the east coast. I've got many happy memories of those few years in my early twenties, great way to see the countryside, over and over again.

Back in my day I always sat with my right wheels on the white line to make sure I got the drivers attention. This was in conjunction with the signs, lights on, flashing lights etc. In my opinion it would be too dangerous for the escort vehicle to sit on the road at the extremity of the load - the job is to warn of a danger facing oncoming traffic, not act as a bumper car :-)

We'd use CB radio to let anyone interested know what was coming, and as others have said you need different combinations of escorts and Police depending on load size. Basically if you see a Police in the escort you know the load is twice normal truck width or more.

Re travelling too far ahead. This is a tricky one to get right. I used to judge how far ahead I needed to be by the size of the load, the speed we were travelling, the width of the road and the opportunities available for people to pull over - the narrowness of verges etc.

Caravanners used to thank me for giving them plenty of warning given the size of their rigs and small tyres etc, truckies didn't mind pulling off the bitumen as long as they had time to slow down. So you have to cater for the needs of a variety of oncoming traffic. It's also easy to skip too far ahead when the truck is grinding up a hill or something. It's a matter of the escort being diligent and trying to do a professional job keeping the road safe for oncoming traffic and for the driver of the load. This sometimes doesn't happen....

It's really up to the oncoming drivers to figure out how to negotiate the load when they see it coming. The purpose of the escort it to warn them so they have time to slow down and be prepared to take evasive action.

Mainroads :heavy vehicles:publications gives a bit of a start to the info they have. I've not found anything about the accreditation process, but the MRWA site talks about the legislation giving accredited pilots specific powers to direct traffic.

Not sure what my biggest load was, but I remember one low loader with a D9 on the back pulled off the black stuff around Overlander roadhouse on the NW highway around some roadworks and the whole left side just sank out of sight. Load started sliding downhill, chains started talking. All very interesting! One of those multi wheeled loader pulled it out.

Another interesting time was loading another D9 on a mine site up your way. The loaders brakes were leaking a bit of air and when the engine was running fast it could supply enough to make it all safe, but at idle the prime mover brakes where the effective ones. When the truck driver drove the D9 -they always got the good jobs - onto the low loader, the weight on the very back of the loader lifted the prime mover and dolly wheels off the ground and the whole shebang started every so slowly moving downhill towards the mine incline and the managers cars. Gaining pace in line with our heartrates, the PM eventually jackknifed around which slowed it, and the truck driver had leapt out of the D9 and into the prime mover and jammed on the go pedal to give more air to the rear brakes. Pretty dangerous situation that resulted in only bruised egos fortunately. A few well placed rocks in front of the wheels would have prevented all this, but that's in hindsight.

If escorts are letting you down, maybe I need to get back into the industry and teach them all how to do it properly - like we used to in the old days...... :-)

Tim