How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

System · January 2010

Building wind and solar sites means moving ling poles down the highway without buying an expensive rig.

This article link describes the process of how to drive and tow a long pole down the highway. The idea is to get the pole or mast, or whatever long thing you need to move up and over the vehicle so the total vehicle length is whiten legal limits. The link to the article is here-

http://www.tongacharter.com/report-mast.htm

It was wrote for moving boat masts, but the system works for whatever long item needs to be transported by small vehicle.

Good thing to know.

Scott

Cariboocoot · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

Could be trouble going around corners, what with the pivot points between the trailer/van and the pole being in different locations.

blackswan555 · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

From website

The trailer simply holds the mast up and allows the mast to slide inside a greased track. The sliding track we used here was just some greased teak strips lashed to the mast. The track is needed because the mast carriage on the tow vehicle pivots at a different location than the trailer to the vehicle. When you turn this causes the distance between the mast carriage on the tow vehicle and the carriage on the trailer to change length.

Have a good one
Tim

Cariboocoot · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

Ah! So it's not secured at the rear.

Check local traffic regs before trying this; the RCMP around here wouldn't allow it.

icarus · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

It can be secured. It just has to be free to slide fore and aft. Rigging up a clamp that surrounds the mast that leaves it free to slide fore and aft is pretty simple. In fact, a simple rope assy, with a clove hitch around the mast, would allow the mast to slide, but not bounce our of the cradle.

Genius if you ask me!

Tony

Some one gave me a ~40' aluminum sailboat mast once. It had been bent slightly. I wanted it to mount a Tv antenna on. (remember those!). The only way I could haul it was on the lumber rack on my Datsun Pick. The rack had a bar that extended over the cab, so the length between the front bar and the rear bar was ~10 at the most. I then had 15' hanging off the back, and ~15' hanging over the front. Lots of flags, and I had a pilot follow me, and I had to really pay attention on the corners, but no big deal!

Cariboocoot · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

I'm just saying that our locale gendarmes do not consider "sliding" to be "secured". You could argue the point with them, but you'd probably be doing it in court.

There's a lot of trucking goes on here what with the ports and logging; they tend to be very picky about things. Once they wanted me to tarp my boat because there were "unsecured" items in it; flotation cushions.

It only takes one officious official to muck things up.

Solar Guppy · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

One can pull a car with another car with some rope, doesn't mean its safe, legal or smart, not that it seems to stop the Darwinian challenged :roll:

niel · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

Solar Guppy wrote: »

One can pull a car with another car with some rope, doesn't mean its safe, legal or smart, not that it seems to stop the Darwinian challenged :roll:

i can go one better as it is irrelevant to know how to drive a mast down the road. most people here getting a mast have it delivered to them for $ and is usually for a wind genny. with seeing as how the op is in tonga replacing their boat mast that makes his original post as nonsense.
new question might be how to do that with thin ice.

GreenPowerManiac · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

That's funny, I was going to strap my wind turbine poles to the back of my dump truck and go for a drive. The props would be upward rather than horizontal. Would watch their progress from the rear view mirrors.

Turns out I didn't have to, but I was temped to do so.

"I'm just saying that our locale gendarmes do not consider "sliding" to be "secured". You could argue the point with them, but you'd probably be doing it in court."

A one time trip usually gets through, however something this cumbersome may indeed attract too much attention with the authorities.

icarus · January 2010

Re: How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

As with so many things, context counts. It is (was) one thing for me to drive 15 km on back roads to my house. It is clearly another to negotiate city traffic and freeway speeds.

That said, I am a huge one for secured loads. Way more times than I would like I have been confronted with loads coming off trucks/trailers/cars etc. A boat cushion at 120kph is scary to be behind as it flies out of a open boat!

I learned real early in the construction biz about securing loads. The first was, I was ~16, driving a 10 yard dump truck. Guy wanted me to return 2 2x12s to the lumber yard. I laid them up over the headboard and said, theses will be fine, they're heavy. By the time I reached 6th gear the wind caught the front of the boards, flipped them off the headboard, and off the back of the truck. Mercilessly no one was behind me.

The second, I had 4 or 5 20' scaffold planks on the lumber rack of my truck. I came around a bend in the road to confront a school bus stopped with the kids walking across the road, panic stopping, the planks slid forward, off the truck right toward those kids! Landing on the road, and once again,, hitting no one. I learned then and there, loads had to be secured in every dimension!

Tony

How to drive a mast down the road - DIY

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