The road from Culpeper, VA to Little Compton, RI is about 550 miles, add to that the 175 odd miles we had already driven from Danville to Culpeper, and in total we had to tow our load almost 800 miles to get it home. And to be entirely fair to the guys at SIPs of America who loaded the SIPs onto our trailer, their loading job preformed perfectly well for the first 650 miles of that trip. We drove lazily through Virginia, a small piece of Maryland, back through Chambersburg and continued traveling to the east on the wide, gently sloping roads of central Pennsylvania without the slightest problem.
It wasn't until we got into western New Jersey that we started to notice that the load had shifted slightly forwards and to the right. We checked the ratchet straps, which were still tight, and continued on our way, but this time we kept a wary eye on the load. Movement was minimal as we crossed through New Jersey, into New York and began to drive over the Tapanzee Bridge. But the bouncing as we drove over the bridge ties seemed to be a bit too much for our overly stressed load, and the forward shift accelerated after that. It was a tense ride as we drove through White Plains, and we pulled over at the first rest stop on 95 North, just after crossing into Connecticut.
There, we found the situation was even worse than it had appeared from the rear view mirror, and the load was precariously close to tipping off of the trailer. A quick Google Maps Search showed us that there was a Home Depot only 2 miles from our rest stop. We cinched the ratchet straps tight as banjo strings and drove slowly down the highway to the next exit, and from there to Home Depot. There, we were most fortunate again: after explaining our situation to the woman behind the Customer Service desk, we were directed to a store associate who was licensed to operate a forklift, he in turn was kind enough to drive his forklift out into the parking lot and help us maneuver our load back onto center. We thanked him profusely, and bought several additional ratchet straps, and tied down our load once more.
By this time, the sun was setting. Although it had been a long day, we decided that now wasn't the time to cut corners, and so we started to do a full safety check before we hit the road again. The ratchet straps were tight. The trailer was still securely fastened to the truck. Running lights- check. Brake lights- check. Left blinker- check. Right blinker- che-- No right blinker. Glad we had thought to check these things, we started to disassemble our duct tape mounting system for the trailer's electrical adapter. Having had such problems getting the thing attached in the first place, we assumed that our current predicament must have been caused by a loose connection to the adapter. But once we confirmed that the 4-Pin portion of the adapter was firmly attached to the truck's 4-Pin socket, and the right blinker still didn't function, we grew more concerned.
It was about quarter to 9 by this time. We were fortunate to find that just up the road from the Home Depot there was an AutoZone that was open until 9 o'clock. We jumped into the truck and drove to the AutoZone as quickly as we dared. As soon as we were in the lot I jumped out and ran into the store. They locked the doors behind me while Sam parked the truck. I bought several pieces of electrical equipment from AutoZone, but the only one that ended up being useful was a tester kit. This kit confirmed our worst fears: the adapter and truck were working just fine, the problem was in the trailer end of things. If it had been a problem with the truck's electrical system, we could have called the U-haul roadside assistance number and they would have handled it. But since it was a problem with our trailer, we had no such back up.
Now, if we had been thinking intelligently, we would have realized that it was late at night, we were both tired, and that the best thing to do was to check into a hotel, spend the night, and tackle the problem in the morning after a full night's sleep. But it had been a long day. We had driven this load 700 miles, and we had maybe 100 left. We were so close to home that we could almost taste it. So, instead of getting some sleep, we just decided that we'd drive slowly and carefully. The truck's blinker still worked after all, and due to the inverted pyramid shape of our load, you could see the truck's blinker from behind the trailer. So we got back on 95, drove up the coast of Connecticut, and finally reached Rhode Island.
It was just around midnight when we hit the Rhode Island border, and that was also when I started to notice our ratchet straps fluttering in the wind in a way they hadn't been doing before. As we continued, the fluttering became more pronounced. We had already discussed pulling over to check the load at the first exit on 195 in Providence since we knew the roads there, and knew that it was a convenient spot to get a 20 foot long trailer off of and back onto the highway. As we drove over the bumps and potholes in the road on the ramp between 95 and 195, the fluttering progressed to flapping, and we were glad that that we had planned ahead to pull over. All of our ratchet straps save one were as loose as could be. The load was being held on by one, single strap which had managed to keep its tension. Terrified at how close we had been to spilling our SIPs all over the highway and causing a major traffic incident, we tightened down the straps once more, and continued our way, slowly, carefully, the last 50 miles to Little Compton.
At 1AM we pulled into the drive way. We paused to check the ratchet straps one more time (we had been doing this compulsively since the last nearly catastrophic loosening of the straps in Providence) and snap a quick photo. We were exhausted, but we had made it.
The next day we were able to confirm what had caused our load to shift and our ratchet straps to loosen. The problem was in the blocking that had been used between the smaller roof SIP panels on the bottom and the wider wall panels on top. When we started out on our trip, all three pieces of blocking looked like the one pictured below. However, this rearmost block was the only one to survive the long drive home unscathed, thanks entirely to the ratchet strap placed directly over it. This ratchet strap kept the block in place for the entire journey home.
The middle piece of blocking wasn't as fortunate, somewhere during the bumps and jostles of the trip, it had flipped onto its side. Because the blocks were not as tall as they were wide, this meant that a sideways block didn't keep the ratchet straps as tight as a vertical block, and the load was able to shift when the block tipped over.
The forward block was in the worst shape- having flipped sideways and started to come apart.you can see here that the block is clearly not maintaining the gap between the two portions of the load that it was supposed to.
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