chain binders

I'm not a real flat bedder, I haul things on step decks on occasion, and we use the lever type ones, but I don't like them.

The big advantage to the lever ones is they are fast, and they stow in a compact position either open or closed. The ratchet ones can stick out when you are finished , if you aren't careful. I would use the ratchet ones where they worked the best and the lever ones on the outside of a load.

We mostly use 2 inch straps to secure our loads, Lever chain binders tend to cause injury to newbies. Facial scars and missing teeth are the two things I have witnessed.

 

Snap binders are only as safe as the guy running them. I've never had a snap binder injure me.

 

I never have either, but I know people that have been injured using them.

Factor in night time, wind, rain, holding a flashlight with a forklift coming and going right next to you, with muddy ruts to stumble around in.

My company only uses them on their current trailers for helping to strengthen the roof the tarps hang from. When they used straight flatbeds, they secured the poultry modules with a chain binder arrangement, which was left hanging down to remove the mods to load and then secure them when the mods were full, sometimes you have to move the trailer while loading it to help out the forklift driver, and those chain binders would get forgotten and run over while attached to the side of the trailer and pull the side out. That is why they use those straps now, when they went to spread axle step decks, they decided they couldn't afford to tear the sides out of them.

I have seen other ways of hauling chickens that involve loading docks, but those also have different problems, The arrangement my company and other companies I have been around use allows the fowl to be grown in and loaded from any building you can get reasonably near to with a tractor trailer. Many of these places are on gravel roads, or on those 17 foot county roads in Indiana where there is little ditch, no shoulder and the poles are close to the road. The Amish in Indiana and elsewhere don't have yard lights, either.