Load crashes off truck going downhill - GIF

[Ron725]

The driver should have used the trailer brake only. The sliding rear end of the tractor turned the congear towards the edge of the road. Trucks are equipped with a hand valve in the cab for trailer brake only. Been a truck driver for 40 years retired now.

[Ralphxyz]

The lead truck was turning to the right the load kept going straight because of no properly tied down and no brakes on the trailer.

Ralph

[nhengineer]

Right Ralph. I figured someone forgot to hook up the air line. How dumb. Also, the operator may have panicked and locked up the tractor brakes thus unable to steer out of it since the front wheels weren't turning. I've seen that happen hundreds of time on the race track by new drivers. You can usually steer out of a skid if you can be gentle with the brake peddle. Not to say that I wouldn't have panicked too.

[ranald]

I'm no expert but they ,in my opinion needed much more power and weight at the rear so the rear ones can hold back the load as we used to do when towing vehicles with cables or chains. The brakes on the trailer/lowloader looked to me as they were working but the load was pushing the tow vehicle as in a jack-knife.

[IAMSatisfied]

Good thing that white post barrier was in place... it prevented the load from going over the edge.

[Mi Tasol]

Another thing is why were there no apparent brakes on the trailer the truck wheels could be seen sliding due to braking but the trailer should have been doing the majority of the braking.

I looked at the video full screen and it looks to me like all the wheels on the trailer were locked up also which would mean that the road surface needed to be blacktop or concrete to provide much greater grip for the tyres. A driver who understood braking may have been able to save this by using less braking as locked up wheels have far less grip than slowly rotating tyres - and that is the whole reason for anti-skid braking