Thread: Rangie 1, Mercedes 0

We're having our driveway re-concreted, so they dug up the old one yesterday and left me a nice 40m stretch of dirt to park in. 6am this morning and they're outside bashing retaining planks into the dirt and generally ensuring that last night's headache won't be forgotten quite as soon as I would have liked.

7am and a large Mercedes cement truck (apparently they make cars as well?) backs down the drive and starts pouring. I'm outside looking on as the young bloke explains how the truck inches forward as they pour, to keep the out-flow constant. Did I mention the dirt? Oh, and that the driveway is at a 10deg incline? I nonchalantly reply that the truck seems to be inching _down_ rather than forward. Much scurrying around later and yep, the truck is bogged. Full of concrete. Costing me $!**# per hour. 90mins to get another truck around to pull them out. The older bloke wanders up and eyes off the Rangie:

"Recon yous could pull the truck up the driveway? How much will that tow?"
Hmm - "Around 3 1/2 tonne" I reply, "Why, what's the truck weigh?"
"Ooh, I dunno, around 20 tonne?"

He helpfully adds that he's got a chain. Ah well ..........

Of course, the chain won't reach all the way to the road, and somehow the humour of me helpfully asking them to move the truck forward a couple of metres is rather lost. So I back the Rangie into the driveway, wheels in the dirt, engage low range, Rock Crawl and lock into 1st gear. A rather large chain is attached to the rear tow point and I take up the strain. Thumbs up from the grinning psycopath in the truck and I give it a little more revs. A slight shudder and then she just _walks_ forward. No spinning, no straining - the truck rises out of the hole in the drive and I pull it up the drive a few more metres.

The old bloke walks up to my driver's window - "Jeez, these things have got a bit of guts, don't they?"

They sure do

Originally Posted by rmp

27 tonnes of which rolling resistance would have been but a fraction, especially as the truck's wheels were turning. Still a great effort though but not a 27t pull in the same way pulling a 3500kg trailer doesn't need 3500kg of force.

Stop trying to steal his glory Robert
He's just pulled a 27 tonne bogged truck and now has a grin as big as his um err well you know his thing