Thread: What happens When you flat tow a vehicle in gear

In 1964, I was working on an exploration crew out of Normanton. We hired a dozer to do some line clearing. When he got there, coming from Quilpie, he was without the ute he was supposed to have.

Now the dozer, a fairly small one (D-4?) was on the back of a tandem flatbed truck, not a trailer, I can't remember what type, probably a WW2 6x6 of some kind. He had the fairly new jeep on an A-frame on the truck's tow hitch. As you will realise, the vision of what was happening to the Jeep from the driver's seat was zero. Combined with the fact that the road was in those days pretty rough and dusty, he would have no idea what was happening to the Jeep. And next to no traffic to alert him to any issues, even if they saw anything through the dust..

Apparently, after the first couple of hundred miles, he stopped for a break, and checked on the Jeep. In his words, "it was worn down to the door handles". He just unhitched it, and drove on. Apparently it must have had a flat rear tyre, the wheel eventually wore down, leaving the axle dragging, and thereafter gradually shedding bits along the road. With the load on the truck, on a rough formed earth road, he did not notice the extra drag.

He had an interesting technique for unloading the dozer - carefully waiting until the front of the truck lifted off the ground, bringing the back of the tray close to the ground, allowing the dozer to move off, skidding the blade along the tray to keep a fair bit of weight on it to ease the drop of the front a bit, then lift the blade to lower the front of the dozer back to the ground. Loading? Push up a bank of dirt.

As you may gather, he was a bit 'rough round the edges'.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

He had an interesting technique for unloading the dozer - carefully waiting until the front of the truck lifted off the ground, bringing the back of the tray close to the ground, allowing the dozer to move off, skidding the blade along the tray to keep a fair bit of weight on it to ease the drop of the front a bit, then lift the blade to lower the front of the dozer back to the ground. Loading? Push up a bank of dirt.

This bit, with a few refinements, is still common today when the yellow shirts aren't looking. Why not? It works.

I've seen a guy not wanting to use ramps, put the bucket of an excavator on a trailer, then use it to lift the front of the excavator, drive it forward so that the tracks are on the trailer, then swing the arm around so that the bucket is on the ground, and use that to push the back end of the excavator up, so that he could then drive on to the trailer.

Originally Posted by cripesamighty

Their conclusion was that the owner inadvertently knocked the gear lever one click too far out of neutral and into low range. They then drove off in the RV without checking what gear was selected in the jeep being towed. Apparently it's easy to do. Poor bugger!

You would need to have a significant lack of mechanical sympathy to achieve this feat. SWMBO has a JL Rubicon and the transfer case lever is a fairly mechanical affair that you don't just "bump" into gear. There is also range display on the dash and a 4WD light as well. Then there is the load when taking off, although I guess with an auto you would need to build up some speed before the torque converter started to drive the engine. But clearly this person managed to do it....


Regards,
Tote

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

I've seen a guy not wanting to use ramps, put the bucket of an excavator on a trailer, then use it to lift the front of the excavator, drive it forward so that the tracks are on the trailer, then swing the arm around so that the bucket is on the ground, and use that to push the back end of the excavator up, so that he could then drive on to the trailer.

It's common practice. They'll take the excy off the side of the float if it's more convenient.

Originally Posted by Tins

It's common practice. They'll take the excy off the side of the float if it's more convenient.

There are dozens of videos on Utube, but I like this one the best. Not sure about that bob-tail truck, must have been built for carting lead!

Originally Posted by V8Ian

It's a Jeep, there'll be no warranty.

Not sure why someone would expect warranty to cover what seems from the story to be driver error

There is another one on Youtube where a woman bought a Jeep and then went mud running covering the Jeep in mud from top to bottom and trashing the alternator.
She was refused warranty on the grounds of misuse and then is complaining That the ads show this as normal use.

Jeep Voids Warranty Due to Mud - YouTube

I cannot find the photo of it but it was totally covered with mud.

Regards PhilipA