re: Big Rig vs Tug Boat Tug of War

So this is what ice road truckers do in the off season, huh?

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This is extremely simple. That tug can put 16,000 pounds of force on the truck. The truck can put more than that on the tug. The tug goes backwards. That's all there is to it.

Pushing barges is different. The barge doesn't have an engine pushing back.

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That tug is rated to pull/push 16,000 lbs. Change water temp, depth, seas, etc. and it can change greatly. Same with the truck, change the wetness of the road, the downward force on the axles due to load and it's traction is going to differ.


Neither is truly rated to what they are designed to pull. The loads they pull are under completely different physical forces so you can't compare exactly. Where's the rating that states this tug can pull 16 kips and it stalls out (or loses traction) and the truck can pull 17 kips and it stalls out (or loses traction). They just aren't rated that way. So I don't know how much force either one can actually put on that rope.

We had the same experience in our shop at work. We knew a forklift was rated for a certain load, but we had to do some pulling and pushing with it and didn't have a true rating of what it could pull if there were no wheels or anything on the load. Didn't know when we were going to spin out (because who rates a forklift that way). Put a load gauge on it and pulled against something and determined that even though we could pull heavy arse trailers around the yard, we couldn't get more than 2 kips of force in the shop before it started spinning out.

Also if you noticed the tug was making head way until it got off center and had to use rudder. As the rudder deflects water it diminishes bollard pull and puts a strain on the engines.

I really dont know if that truck can or not. I know my tahoe is rated to tow 8k lbs, but i know if you put a force gauge, I'd spin out way before 8k lbs get pulled

You also have to consider that the truck has its power distributed through 3 axles which is going to give it lower power per tire for the same total power allowing it to pull harder before they break loose. It also has extremely low gears.

The way they had the rope attached to the truck also helped. Up high on the crane gave some good down-force on the tires. If somehow the truck and tug could get level with each other the truck would have lost some advantage.

Bollard pull is a rating of how hard the boat can pull. The way that's measured is the boat is tied to a bollard with a load cell and it pulls the load cell.

Nah I don't think you'd see that number anywhere for a truck because it isn't really useful.

Unless you are trying to drag a tug boat.

Shell parking lot at that boat launch. I believe it

At work we use a D6 bulldozer to hold barges to the bulkhead. One time a tug came to get a barge and they didn't untie the barge from the tug. The dozer was at the bulkhead when they realized what was going on and stopped the tug from pulling the dozer into the water.