Ladders And Vehicles Shouldn't Be Mixed!
It is inevitable that Extension Ladders will need to be transported from one place to another. Unless you have them delivered to their only permanent location, ladders must be transported by vehicle, which is why ladder racks are designed to enable safe, easy transportation. When ladders are not secured correctly to a vehicle, they can have serious, sometimes fatal consequences. Last month, a motorcyclist was severely injured when he fell off a pick-up truck and struck his bike. When he crashed and was seriously injured, an airlift was needed to transport him to a hospital. While retrieving his ladder from a busy freeway, another man was killed. He died instantly after being struck by another vehicle while picking up his ladder and removing it from his truck. In response to the ladder falling off his truck, he reversed his vehicle down the hard shoulder to the scene after backing over to the hard shoulder.
Numerous instances have occurred where ladders have been involved in road accidents, often due to sliding off pickup trucks. It’s easy to assume that drivers aren’t going to take any additional safety precautions because the ladder is mostly in the truck bed, but most of these accidents could have been avoided with some kind of ladder security.
There have been some horrendous ladder transportation situations I have witnessed, including ladders placed through rearview mirrors and protruding into lanes or being carried outside the car by two people holding it out the window. A number of incidents have been reported in which police are getting into trouble when confiscating ladders with bad transport, but without a way to move the vehicle, resort to such ridiculous tactics.
For the Best Extension Ladders to prevent these accidents, it is important to secure it properly in your vehicle. However, caution should still be used sometimes. The video shows a ladder in a car wash that was not properly secured to a truck, which led to a car wash disaster. While the vehicle was being washed, the ladder got caught in the top rotating brush, regardless of the fact that it was correctly fitted to the brackets on the truck, and the driver, blissfully unaware, drove out of the car wash. As the ladder was still stuck, it ripped free of the brackets, causing the brackets to fall off the truck and leaving a substantial mess in the car wash. While the driver was not held responsible for the damage to the truck, the ladder ripped free of the brackets and fell into the car wash.
Whenever ladders are transported on a vehicle, they should be secured either in the vehicle’s roof rack or on the flatbed or pickup truck’s bed. The ladder racks of some builders’ vans can be used to transport ladders, while brackets, such as those shown in the car wash video, can be used to secure ladders on the flatbed without taking up flatbed space. In the event that the ladder protrudes over the front or back of the vehicle, you should attach a bright cloth or high-visibility jacket. This will alert other road users that the ladder is there.
In the video, Aluminum Extension Ladders are shown to be always removed from vehicles before going through a mechanical car wash, but it shouldn’t be necessary to mention it. Using these cautionary tales as your guide will help you avoid making the same mistakes again in the future. Otherwise, you’ll lose your ladder and brackets, and you’ll need to spend hundreds of dollars on repairs.
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