What would you have done differently??

[Rawze]

I have no dog in this fight, i am not a flat-bed guy but here is what I see as an outsider...


   

Just looks like if this one weld were to break -- due to excess stress in an accident, or extreme cold weather and the high tension placed on a hot-snot-aluminum weld, etc... that whole chain is going to jump violently out over to the opposite side of the trailer and into the roadway. The hook is upside down if the weld lets go...

Just seems to me that there is no way in hell that more than a few hundred pounds of load rating could be relied on at this point where it is secured. -- sure that chain is beefy, but that is not the weak point here by any means. It is that aluminum, cheesy, mig-welded stand-off that has absolutely nowhere near the holding power if that chain that is obvious in this picture. - I can only hope that no one expects that thing to hold the same load rating as the chain does in this photo. hopefully, at this point where it is secured, the load will never exert more than a few hundred pounds of force in an emergency. - Otherwise, someone is in for a very rude awakening one day.

Securing the Lighter stuff, I can understand, but often, I see stuff like that on heavy coils and steel that can kill people in a hurry scares me when I see someone do that.

- just my own thoughts on it, I cringe when I see the heavier stuff secured like that but I am also not a flat bed guy either.

if I Owned a trailer with rub rails on them like this, and wanted to use them for securement, even of medium duty,... I would go back and cut out every one of them and install some large grade-8 or better long-bolt studs + washers +m a backing plate under the trailer and replace those aluminum standoffs to ensure they could never come loose under high tension. -- OR, at the very least, if those standoffs are hollow (god forbid that is even worse, I am assuming they are not), out some large, long-bolts through them to strengthen them enough they could be somewhat relied on.