Worse freakin' night ever!
 

Sooooo..... last night I dropped my loaded trailer in an abandoned Home Depot parking lot so I could make a quick run into a neighborhood that a trailer couldn't get into. Threw on my kingpin lock and made sure everything was secure. Took off and came back about 20 minutes later to hook back up.

As I'm pulling up to my trailer, I started thinking to myself that something just doesn't look right. The parking lot is completely dark because of the store not being in use, therefore the street lamps weren't turned on. I get out of my truck and walk up to my trailer to see that that the landing gear had broken through the concrete and had sunken to about 2.5 feet into the freakin' earth! :eek1:

At this point I'm thinkin' that I'll probably have to call for a crane to lift the trailer out of the holes. I decided to try to get myself outta this situation before I called someone to spoon feed money to. I started crankin' away at the landing gear, hoping like hell that there would be enough travel left to get the front of the trailer raised to a somewhat workable level.

I cranked the landing gear down to it's absolute limit and dropped the bags on my truck. Luckily, I had just enough clearance to get the tapered end of the frame on my truck under the lip of the trailer. Started backing in, buuuuuuut of course I still didn't have enough clearance because I couldn't get the trailer to clear the rear tractor tires. :thumbsdown:

I thought that surely there had to be some wood laying around somewhere in the back of the abandoned building since it was at some point a Home Depot.... at least that's what I was hoping. I walked to the back of the building, and to my surprise there was a bunch of wood that was usable.

I grabbed a couple of blocks and began my journey back to the front of the building which seemed like a freakin' mile long walk. I threw the wood down and climbed back into my truck and turned on the AC because of course I'm sweatin' my ass off at this point. Sat there for a few, aired the bags back up and went back to the trailer to raise the landing gear. Got the landing gear up and placed the wood underneath.

Started to lower the landing gear again, and everything seemed to be going well until I hear the wood start to crack. I cautiously cranked on the landing gear a little more and hoped that there would be enough clearance for I started to fear that the wood would eventually break. I quickly climbed back into my truck, dumped the air in the bags again and attempted to back under.

I was able to get under the trailer a little more but still not enough to clear the edge of the fifth wheel.

http://i39.tinypic.com/zk4yl1.jpg

In a last desperate attempt, which is probably what I should've done from the very beginning once I got the landing gear out of the ground, I reattached the air lines and slowly pushed the trailer back to solid ground. I then lowered the landing gear again, dumped the air in the bags, and then was finally able to hook back up to my trailer.

What did I learn from this hour and a half of BS? Use extreme caution on what type of surface you drop a heavily loaded trailer onto. http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...milies/doh.gif


BTW.... my load weighed 45,111 pounds.

Get yourself a couple of 2X8 pieces of hardwood lumber, and put them in your side box. The next time you drop a loaded trailer (especially on someone else's property), put those under your landing gear to prevent this scenario from happening again.

Well..the good thing, is that you got yourself out. It would not have been fun to call a wrecker to come out. That would have been a nice bill to pay.

Yep.... went out this morning and found myself two big solid hunks of wood for future use if needed. :thumbsup:

You did all that in an hour and a half!!! You did real good

Junky concrete if it couldn't stand up to that weight. Musta only been about 4 inches thick instead of at least 8 inches and reinforced for a parking lot area. My company did a lot that was 10 inches thick with #5 rebar in it. Had to withstand 100K lbs sitting on it and bouncing.

I would consider you lucky that someone didn't see you and make you pay for the repairs to the concrete.

If thats your worst night ever then you're doing pretty good.

I would have saved myself all that hard work and just dialed 911! ;)

I wonder if the area you dropped the trailer was really concrete. The customer parking lot of our Home Depot is only asphalt. The only parts of the lot that are concrete are the pad in front of the exit doors (customer loading area), the truck docks, and a strip along one side of the store next to lawn and garden they sometimes drop pallets onto.