Ice Pack

When you carrying 6000 lbs of meet you want to make sure it’s good and cold in the back. When you think that meat can begin to rot in less than 3 hours when not refrigerated, I guess going off the road into a snow bank isn’t such a bad idea.

Unfortunately for the great crew at Big Rig Towing the entire rig had to be shoveled out before it could be towed out.

A couple of hours of heavy snow hauling did the trick and got this busted rig back to the shop for repairs.

Luckily none of the beef was spoiled just a few blisters and a couple of sore backs.

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Gas Leak

The weight of an explosive does not directly correlate with the energy or destructive impact of an explosion, it can depend upon many other factors such as containment, proximity, preheating, purity and external oxygenation (in the case of gas leaks and BLEVEs).

BLEVE is an acronym for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion.

In the case of this super b full of propane that would not be a good thing, even if the rig is miles from any inhabited area.

This roll over near Rimby took Big Rig Towing an entire day to offload its cargo of propane before it was safe to right the rig and get it back on the road.

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A Penny For Your Thoughts

Just so you know, a penny laid on a railway track cannot derail a train. The possibility of that happening is none existent. A big object like a car or a very large boulder could send a train off track but most derailments are actually caused by breaks or fissures in the rail or defects in the wheels.

While Big Rig Towing is noted most for the recovery of large transport trucks it can also be an asset in any situation where heavy loads need leverage to be put right.

As in this train car derailment, when 168,000 lbs comes of its rails, you need a little more than your average tow truck to do the job.

Don’t try this at home. If you have something that needs towed, lifted or adjusted that weighs more than your family car, best choice is to call an expert in heavy lifting and towing.

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The Ditch

Sometimes it is almost impossible to see where the road ends and the ditch begins. Add blowing snow to the mix and the equation becomes even harder to puzzle out. Under extreme conditions it is a testament to the drivers of big rigs that more don’t end up in the ditch.

When temperatures go below -30 ending up in the ditch, whether its day or night, presents a whole new set of problems. Not just for the driver of the rig but for the tow truck operators as well. Keeping warm and safer while working with thousands of pounds of frozen steel is a difficult process.

Because the human body is mostly made up of water and we know that water freezes at -32 c getting stuck in the ditch on a -40 night becomes more of a rescue than a tow.

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Rotator

photo 4A tow truck rotator is essentially a big crane mounted to the deck of the tow truck and can be used for everything from lifting heavy machinery fallen from rigs that have flipped over or for removing a load from a rig that needs less weight so it can be towed. It can also lift heavy equipment from one place to another to assist in getting cargo off one rig onto another.

Big Rig Towing has a number of rotator tow trucks and an can boast they have the only 75 ton rotator in Southern Alberta. Especially once the weather gets cold the highways become more treacherous. An expert rotator operator can make all the difference in getting your towing situation resolved quickly and safely.

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Freeway Rescue

BIG-RIG-TOWINGThe Deerfoot Trail transects the city of Calgary. A busy 3 lane freeway with a 100 km an hour speed limit, it takes traffic south to north across the city and onto Edmonton. The city of Calgary has a very cool safety feature that is a free service to all those who run out of gas or break down in their cars along this crowded stretch of road.

That’s right, if your car breaks down or has a flat, even if you run out of gas the city has tow trucks patrolling 24/7 and will aid or tow you to one of the safety zones created every so many km along the route.

While this is an awesome service it unfortunately does not include big rigs and other heavy equipment.

Big Rig Towing & Recovery specializes in this type of tow. Even though it may seem benign compared to rescuing big trucks from icy mountain passes or dragging them out of watery irrigation ditches and rivers, hooking up and towing on a busy highway at rush hour can be equally as dangerous as any mountain road.

If your rig is stranded on any Alberta road call an expert like Big Rig Towing and stay safe.

Big Rig Towing is Hiring


.
Tow truck operators required in Calgary, Alberta to operate tandem axle tow trucks (we do NOT tow cars). Full time work, guaranteed salary plus commission/bonus. Paid every two weeks. Benefits package. Uniforms and coveralls supplied. Excellent equipment. Dedicated trucks.

Send resume by:

Online: Careers

Fax: 403-531-1157

Email: bigrig454@yahoo.ca

Call Rick: 403-478-0298

Roller Rollover

It just doesn’t matter. If you’re big and heavy and you roll over, you need something bigger and heavier to get you back on your feet.

40,000 pounds is big but surprisingly it only takes a few degrees off center and even something this big can roll.

As you can see it took a couple of Big Rig Tow trucks and their cranes to upright and get this roller onto a flat bed.

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Heavy Grain

Grain is heavier than you might think, especially when there’s tons of it.

We talked about cornering too fast in the past and the dynamics of load and centrifugal forces. Everyone knows if you’re too heavy and too fast over you go.

Luckily no one was hurt in this roll over and Big Rig Towing was able to get this rig back on its rubber with very little damage except for lost cargo.

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Tilt

photo 1How many trucks get stuck in the ditch every year because they failed to negotiate a corner correctly or under estimate the steepness of the curb?

That would be an interesting statistic. I would think that cornering and knowing your environment would be the most important part of a big rig driving test. Surely you need to be able to know these things to get hired to drive one of these big trucks.

This flat bed was transporting a farm sprayer when it pulled over to let a car pass. A couple more inches and this would have been a roll over

Big Rig Towing pulls its fair share of hapless rigs and their helpless cargo from many a ditch in southern Alberta.

The only good thing about so much practice is you got to get good at something you do so often.

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