Vehicle pilots

I do not understand why they would need to call.

Surely the signs, flashing lights and as needed hand signals would be enough.

And they usually sit far enough out in front enough for trucks coming the other way to take safe evasive action. I am sure that your RV and any caravan is much more manageable than a truck. Especially a road train.

The problem with calling is what are they going to use as a landmark........ "wide load heading east 3 kilometres from tower".... what tower are they talking about and on what road!

As for a van requiring more time to manoeuvre of the road....... how much time do you need?

If I have a vehicle coming towards me with flashing lights and a sign saying wide load I know there is something big coming..... most times we will pick the flashing lights up way before we see the pilot vehicle.

The pilot vehicle normally advise oncoming trucks of the overall width of the wideload.
There is no way that a caravanner is going to get that or any other courtesy from a truckie. (IMHO).
Mike.

Pilots of wide loads need to assume that many approaching vehicles do not have UHF reception. Therefore they travel with flashing lights and sufficiently ahead of the load to provide the adequate safety provisions. Accordingly it is unnecessary and a waste of time to be making general broadcasts of their presence.

As an exception, they may communicate with large trucks by radio to provide helpful detail of the approaching wide load.

Hello new boy, we always use channel 40 as you get all soughts of alerts including wide loads and so we have plenty of time to pick a good place to pull over and park.
The truckies also alert you to other things as well like police road blocks, radar, road accidents, blockages, etc,etc, so I find all this extremely useful.
You can always use your channel scan feature if you have one but as for me I rather listen to the trucky channel than to rv traveller channel banging on about this and that.

JMHO

.

Sit on channel 40 and you will here the calls to approaching trucks giving width of load or number of units. The calls can generally be heard for quite some kilometres. You will soon find out about extra wide loads well before you reach them. You can always initiate questions if you have any.

When escorting farm machinery, i always alert approaching trucks about what i have (eg two field bins and a boom spray following). With a convoy such as this, we keep a distance between each unit so vehicles can pass, although as soon as the rear guard picks up someone behind, she alerts the pilot who pulls the whole convoy over as soon as there is a safe place for all. It is generally a waste of time alerting cars as not many use UHF. Sometimes it means driving straight at them until they yield - you get on every time who thinks the warnings are not for him ~. I have only once encountered caravanners, and both pulled over and stopped completely without any two way contact being made. A very friendly wave and a smile as i passed to thanks them :) I travel a good distance ahead of the oversize load so there is plenty of time for even a road train to pull up if need be, so plenty of time for a caravan.

With commercial outfits such as you will meet in the Pilbara they do not allow you to pass nearly as often as we do so it may be a slow trip behind, although they will be aware of you there.

Motherhen

I asked a road pilot once why they don't broadcast to caravans and he said that they never get an answer.

Lame excuse in my book.

The majority of caravans would have UHF these days.

I always ask for the width if it is not offered. Eventually the message might get through that we are all road users.

There is no law requiring all-road users to carry a UHF radio, so whilst helpful to make a broadcast call it will only ever be heard by those who have UHF, and assuming it is switched on to the channel being broadcast on.

There is only one sure-fire way to avoid any hazard on the road and that is to look out the windscreen, first and foremost, radio calls may assist, but then again they may confuse...

Saw a caravanner end up in a ditch when one of the renter cop (nissan patrol) pilot vehicles came around a corner on the wrong side too quick.
I have mates that are pilot drivers, and they said these pilots sometimes have no idea.
Best for everyone to leave their UHF on channel 40 on our road train routes heading north of Perth.....these roads are horrendously busy with big loads.
BW.

Just arrived Perth from Geraldton - 5 over size going North & as we have channel 40 on their constant communication with truckies enabled us to know exactly what was on the road.
Truckies also let us know when safe to overtake.
We always say a thank you & often get a quick comment from truckie on whats happening - even good spots to camp.
Perhaps we all need to learn the escort lingo - "secure the bridge' 'closing the back door' 'southbound 3.5 stay on the black' " over the fog line'
Perhaps an escort could do a translation for us all?
Cheers Heather

Tis simple,

Police escort. Get right off the road and stop.

Pilot escort. Ask the pilot how wide he is. He may come back with something like long and skinny, 4.5m or 4.5 metres at the wheels. Which translates to an extended trailer under escort, 4.5m is the width of the load or 4.5m at the wheels is the width of the trailer.
Please just call the pilot and keep it short. He also may ask you to just run your wheels along the fog line or if the load is coming through a narrow section to for you to pull up altogether.

I passed a wide load the other day and the escort thanked me for asking and the truck driver thanked me for pulling over as the road was narrow.

Had dinner with a float driver last night before the sporting event that had Ricky Stewart crying in his beer again. We had a good old laugh about what some Carravaners do and some of the high speeds they travel at on not such good roads.

Wow I didn,t expect such robust discussion thanks all.My question has been answered by a couple of people ,lack of response by us R/Vs seems to be the main reason we don't get a call.I listen to 40 on long trips with or without the van and find the information excellent ,the "F" word is dropped occasional and 90% of the time directed at some vanner doing all manner of silly things .Without exception I have found all truckies to be polite and thankful you have called them up just advising them you are aware of there presents.
I still believe a courtesy call from a pilot wouldn,t hurt especially when there have been no truck in the vicinity for some time.

Just a comment about communication between drivers.
Back in the early 90's there was a funny incident involving an O/size and an O/Length vehicles in Northampton WA.
There was a wide multi wheeler prime-mover and trailers coming south with a loco aboard and at the same time a long prime-mover and trailers carrying rail line going north.
Total lack of communication between pilots and drivers resulted in both units meeting at the worst possible place in the middle of town, (those of you who know Northampton know where I mean).There is a bend in the highway right in the middle of town and thats where they met.
Result: No accident but lots of red faces, shouting and swearing while they worked out which unit would be easiest to back up.
The locals had a good laugh and after a couple of hours the road was cleared and both units continued their respective journeys.


Disco.

We all make mistakes . I was piloting and driving floats with wide loads before radios were put into trucks . You had to be careful as there was always someone who thought that they were better drivers than Jack Brabham . Chopped in and left you with no space in front or came in the inside while you were making a turn . It is even worse now . I thought that I could swear when things go wrong but I heard language on a train in Melbourne a few months ago from some 15 to 16 year old girls just as bad as I have ever heard anyone ever use so it is not just truckies . Some years ago I heard a mature woman go on with very bad language for about 3/4 of an hour on a cb.

I was a pilot driver for a few years.
My job as a pilot was to let the wide vehicle know what was approaching him, wether it be car, bike, truck, dead animal on the road etc. This was to allow the driver to take whatever action was needed. As a courtosy, we informed any heavy vehicle what the size was. By telling the wide load that a caravan is approaching, we are essentially telling them as well, if they are on channel.

The rear escorts job is to tell the wide load what is coming up from behind, and wether the load is still where it should be. We also help other vehicles to over take as required.

Police escort vehicles are not suppose to abandon what they are doing. They are technically off duty, and hired by the hour by the owner of the wideload business. This can be a second job for them. This also applies to those who ecsort parades down the main street of a town. One man police stations may be different.

I've owned a 100 tonne Drake low loader for several years, piloted thousands of wide loads and hauled oversize earthmoving equipment for over 30 yrs. It's a waste of time trying to contact anyone coming towards you, as you often have little time to make contact.

I was running a 3.6M load West of Kimba and came around a bend to find a wide load that was 5M wide coming towards me, only 250M away, and the pilot only 50 metres in front of the truck. It was fortunate we had plenty of road width at that point.

Many truckies are in too much of a hurry, and won't wait for wide loads even. I was piloting my 100 tonner float from Brisbane to Kalgoorlie at 4.2M wide when we came to a bridge on the Barrier Hwy, well west of Broken Hill - and an East-Wester was barrelling towards us.
I asked him to back off, and he refused. He passed my float right on the bridge and forced my driver into the bridge kerbing, damaging two rims on the dolly in the process. Too many truckies are just plain dangerous operators with a "pedal to the metal" mentality.

As far as wide loads go, get used to them, in the North of W.A. There's over 200 wide load permits being issued a month, by the MRD of W.A. - and that's double what it has been, and it's going to increase by even more again.

The Chevron Wheatstone gas project at Onslow alone, is going to have 700 road train movements from Perth a week, over the next 18 mths. That's above the other, already-increased road train traffic. Wheatstone is one of Australias largest current projects, at about $50B from memory.

Here's a couple we ran into South of Karratha on 3rd July, they were heading South and we were travelling North.
Both the pilot and the Police escort forced us right off the road, because these loads were around 7.5M or 8M wide.
These platform floats contained 184 wheels each, and each wheel is loaded up to 2 or 2.5 tonnes, so these two wide loads travelling in convoy would have been grossing around 400 tonnes each.