Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Charlie
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While I was deployed I never saw a member of the United States armed forces driving a HMMWV outside of a base, but you would not drive around in a big truck if you did not need to, so you might do something like that. Also, in one mission, I transported a Soldier, his HMMWV, and his HMMWV trailer to set up a check point. The HMMWV was not considered safe enough to drive, so we loaded it on my truck, and then I pulled the trailer. I kind of felt bad, because the trailer lights hit the ground a few times and broke.
For those that do not know, that is the Load Handling System, which I drive regularly. It has a trailer that fits another flat rack, which yes, is similar to the civilian truck shown, although the hook grabs from the other direction. In Afghanistan, we loaded up flat racks, and then drove to a forward operating base, where they were supposed to have their own flat racks loaded. We drop ours, load theirs, and charley-mike (continue movement).
That never happened. Also, if anyone else loaded anything, we needed to redo it, then stuff still fell off.
We periodically asked the driver behind us how our load looked and they always said that it looked fine. Then they would tell us something fell off. Whenever possible, the local nationals tried to grab those falling things.
There is another version of the LHS called the Pallet Load Handling System that has a fifth axle and an ability to control tire air pressure. I am supposed to drive a version with a 2,500-gallon fuel tank and pump attached, but I do what I am told.
[Edit] At least for my current unit, drivers' training on the road is more important than moving vehicles at one fort or another, so we take every operational truck we have. However, when I was in Flagstaff a week or two ago, the engineers brought an M915 dump truck on a semi trailer, pulled by a variant of the LHS that I had not seen before, while we had an M915 semi pulling a fuel trailer. I did not understand why they did not just drive the dump truck, it was basically the same truck that our Soldiers drove.