this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
208 points (97.7% liked)

Asklemmy

43945 readers
591 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Give us the cheat codes to your industry/place of work!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like you’re talking about icy or wet roads. I’ve never had a trailer do that on dry pavement and I can definitely stop faster emptying than full.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I really wish that were entirely the case. The distances I quoted came from safety trainings I’ve had to take over the years. Given my personal experiences during that time, I think they were from before ABS was mandated. And I had a lot of ABS failures when I was OTR and few close calls as a result of those failures. That’s one of the reasons I chose to switch to running a yard truck 5 years ago. Far less stress.

When ABS failed on dry pavement and I needed to stop in a hurry, the affected tandem would tend to lock up and bounce along the ground. Nerve racking and scary when there’s traffic in front of you, but not near as bad as on wet or icy roads. The sheer terror of feeling one of my axles start sliding under me.

If I had one word of advice for drivers new to the industry, it would be to drive as if none of the safety systems on the truck and trailer exist because in my experience they will fail exactly when you need them.

But when they do work they are f-ing magical.