On all my tour packs we measure every box and
play Vectorworks tetris. I have a generic 3D truck rectangle and I make all my boxes in 3D. Unfortunately not all departments embrace 3D drafting so when I
hand it off to the TD I typically shoot the 3D file over and then viewport out all the views they need and then a generic file of every box with both 2D and 3D symbols.
I didn't create the attached file but when I
hand my file off to the TD it has recommendations on where I would like to see load control installed in the pack. I have
load-bar symbols and ratchet symbols so as I'm working I know exactly how much room I'm losing. I also budget about 5% slop in case they have to
load-out on an uphill incline with spaghetti arm truck loaders.
It's a lot easier to figure out load control when you know the trucking company and know how they
lay out
e-track in their trucks. Clark Transfer and Showmotion tend to have really wonderful
e-track options, whereas the other entertainment transports get generic trailers and rarely modify their internal structures so if you're figuring out a dense pack you have to keep it loose until you see the trailer at the dock because sometimes they may only have vertical
e-track every 6' or a single run of horizontal
e-track at knee height and another at nose height and you're stuck getting creative on how to secure the stuff. It's not as easy as sea containers where you can just have a welder standing by on the dock to weld in eyebolts wherever you need load control, so if you're keeping it inexpensive and you have a lot of stuff be ready to
throw all the planning to the wind in order to keep the load secure for a long haul. More is better, if the air-ride goes out on the trailer and you had half as much load control as you anticipated because you wanted to hold tight to the initial plans the set will show up to the destination in pieces because it was blammed into the trailers ceiling on every
bump in the
road.
I do all weight measurements in an excel spreadsheet - before we leave the rental shop I use a freight scale or
load cell to get all the box weights. While you may have 44,000# to
play with, you need to remember you can only load 20,000# per single axle or 34,000# per tandem axle - if you're just using a generic freight company and they shoot out a single axle trailer this has the potential to get not fun with a ton of copper or
ballast but the entertainment shippers I know only
send out tandems so for me it's typically not a thing I think about. If a cop thinks a truck is overweight they'll bust out a
portable scale that measures axle by axle on the side of the
road and you'll have a very grumpy
driver who had to redistribute the load on the side of the
road. Also, if your trucker shows up with a mega-sleeper you're going to lose some weight from your total load-hauling capability so if it's only going a few hours and it's a load you know may be edging close to weight limits request a daycab from the trucking company. I can't get Google to confirm this, but every Clark
driver I've ever worked with shouts that weight behind the rear axle is effectively doubled on the rear axle - basic lever physics says this seems in the realm of accurate though. All fringe situations but if you're working with a budget dispatch to keep trucking costs down it has the potential to bite you if planning isn't done in
advance.
You'll see in the file attached that it is very much 2D - left side is Nose, right side is Tail, and then there are slices to show stacking order. Bottom of the
page is the floor, top of the
page is the ceiling. 1 of 7 trucks I think? A ton of tetris, but when we started figuring out the tetris we were really confident this would all fit in 5 trucks. It was a few hours of tetris, and no fancy computer programs but accurate measurements made sure the initial
load out went pretty smoothly.