Golight

REAL WORLD SCENARIOS

By James E. Lewis

I’d like to paint you a scenario – actually, two scenarios. These scenarios are real and were experienced by me, and an epiphany occurred after the second one – perhaps you can relate.

I was very active in safety audits and driver training for several years, where I’d go into a small towing or trucking company, perform a mock DOT audit, check out their training records, human resources driver documentation, and things like that, and then train their drivers – especially in the towing company situations.

Within 30 days, I duplicated the same scenario almost exactly with one major difference that I’ll explain in a moment. Please visualize with me:

It was cold and dead in the middle of winter – the first scenario was in North Texas – Amarillo, to be exact, and the other was in Strasburg, Colorado, east of Denver.

Both scenarios involved a 50-ton wrecker, both JerrDan units, and both were built on a Peterbilt chassis. Both trucks were fairly new and well-equipped. In both scenarios, I had a trainee with me operating the primary truck (with me) and a secondary unit with another operator.

Specifics of the first scenario:

We got a call from Texas Department of Public Safety about a tractor-trailer that had gone off the road on I-40 and down into a ditch that was about 20 feet deep. The tractor-trailer was about 60 feet from the hard surface. It

had laid over on its right side. It was a Freightliner Cascadia owned by a major company and was pulling a tanker trailer that had 2,000 gallons of water in it for oil field use.

We got on scene, surveyed the damage and the ground, knowing we’d be dealing with a lot of ice and a little snow, and started rigging to bring the truck up with the 50-ton and using a 20-ton Century 4024 on an International chassis as an anchor unit on the tractor.

Our truck was equipped with some nice, bright, solid-mounted lights – typical upper and lower work lights with six large lights in all. We angled our truck to use the lighting and angled the 20-ton in front of the 50-ton to use the work lights on that truck. The 50-ton had four winch cables, and we began rigging for a pull point on the far side of the rear of the trailer, the front of the trailer over the truck’s drive wheels and set up a low-pull situation with snatch blocks on the 20-ton with rigging hooked to the highest point of the truck’s front axle which was the truck driver’s side, considering how it was sitting.

That’s when we then realized we had a problem. Our 50-ton Jerr-Dan was sitting at a strange angle in order to make the best use of the boom and winches, but our work lights weren’t shining directly on the rear of the trailer OR the front of the trailer – not on either rigging point, and of course, you have to watch your rigging for problems as you start pulling and continue through your recovery.

We had to choose which rigging point was the most important to illuminate. We chose to put slack in all four cables, relaxing the rigging to the ground, and repositioned the truck where the work lights would bear down on the rear of the trailer. We used the light from the 20-ton to illuminate the front of the tractor and hoped there would be enough light to illuminate the front of the trailer and the truck’s drive wheels – our other rigging point. There wasn’t.

We’d taken almost half an hour in running around to slack all the rigging and have people run all over the place in order to reposition both trucks – and it was 22 degrees out, spitting snow, and the wind was blowing at about 30 mph – typical for Amarillo in the wintertime.

We took up all the slack, and with several people out in the middle of the recovery with Mag lights and other flashlights, and dangerously close to the truck being recovered, we were sort of able to illuminate the whole work scene. It took the two large trucks and five helpers with flashlights (including two State Troopers) to put light in every place we needed it.

We got the recovery done, rolled the truck over easily, and used the liquid in the tank to stabilize the load and help it over. We repositioned the 50-ton and hooked up the tractor-trailer to be towed into town.

Now, scenario number two:

Almost the same down to every detail, except the tractortrailer involved a Peterbilt truck and an empty dry van trailer. The 50-ton Jerr-Dan went out with a 25-ton single axle Century 5130 on a Freightliner M2 chassis, and we started surveying and rigging. The tractor-trailer was down a slope, but on its left side, and about 150 feet down the hill.

We rigged onto the underside of the truck and trailer and set up to slide the whole unit back up the hill, and then do a “reverse roll” once it was on the shoulder.

This time, I was able to set up the primary and secondary unit FIRST considering winch angles, elevation, and rigging instead of lighting. I had the wireless remotes to three sets of Golight Stryker Series LED lights in my pocket. The remotes were big enough and the buttons were manageable enough to where I didn’t have to take off my gloves to use them. That was a blessing in 16-degree weather and blowing snow.

The operator of the 25-ton 5130 unit had four Golight Strykers on his truck; two on the right side and two mounted facing the rear. The 50-ton I was in had four lights on the right side of the wrecker body, two mounted facing the rear, and two on the left side.

I lost count of the number of times I reached into my pocket, paired a pair of lights together, and moved them in tandem to focus more of that radical lighting on our work scene. These things are good to right at 5,000 feet of illumination, so you can probably imagine how well we were covered at 150 feet. Even though it was 2 a.m., we lit the place up like a football stadium! As State Troopers arrived, along with one of our flatbed drivers, they all told the same story – they could see our lights from over three miles away where they turned at a freeway exit/entrance to come in our direction.

We dropped massive light on the rear rigging at the rear of the trailer, both on the topside and underside of the truck’s drive wheels where the front of the trailer sat, and the 25-ton 5130 put light in three different places on the truck itself as well as overall light on our scene.

No slacking the lines to reposition the truck. No running up and down a 60-degree hill in a foot of snow. With the winch remotes on the tow units and the wireless remotes for the lights, we could get a safe distance away from our recovery trucks and the unit being recovered and make all the magic happen.

After we were finished, I saw that I hadn’t before realized just how valuable these light sets were – their features helped us, saved us time, made us much safer, and we didn’t have to worry about something breaking in the shadows and not seeing it.

Let’s face it – there’s nothing darker than a pitch-black night while trying to look at something that isn’t properly illuminated. If something breaks, I want to see it coming at me. I want full control of the recovery. With Golights, I had full control.

The Stryker units have some new features installed since I first worked with them several years ago – they have an instant command to return the light to a home position – you save the time it would otherwise take to make them move. You can now spin (pan) and tilt each light doing both movements at the same time. And the remote-control buttons have fluorescent backlighting for great visibility.

Golight’s GT series is fairly new and has some recently changed features – they have higher powered internal motors to move stronger and quicker. Their cases are sealed against weather, dirt, and corrosion. Their mounting brackets have been upgraded to 14-gauge steel. And the portable magnetic versions have twice the grip of the previous models.

I’m old-fashioned, I work hard, and I stick to what works and what I’m used to, usually - but that’s before I proved to myself what an incredible difference – in all aspects of the job – that great, adjustable lighting makes.

You just can’t go wrong with Golight’s multiple styles and capacities in any form of usage – towing, trucking, farming, construction, oil field – they have something for any need you may have.