Drops & Hooks 101

Today's lesson is in dropping and hooking 53 foot dry vans.

 

Back in my Swift days I did a lot of drop and hook. A high percentage of the trailers were dropped too low so I'd have to crank them up to the proper height so it wouldn't scrape off all my good grease. It just got to the point where I put a little grease on before each and every hook. Then 2 years ago I picked up a brand new trailer that I use every day, drop it about once a week on average against a dock and always grease 5th wheel before hooking back up. Just a habit, no problems with the 5th wheel but that could be due to keeping it greased up all the time as well.

 

I mentioned it was an advanced technique of mine to touch the landing gear to the ground-- in this case all I was doing was gonna grease the 5th wheel and decided to make a drop and hook video. Touching it to the ground was for greasing purposes only, when I drop that trailer in the docks or in the yard I leave the landing gear about and inch up. Then usually within a day or two of hooking up my loaded trailer I find some time on the side to re-drop it and grease it good.

 

I did that in my car in California, the trucker was trying to pass me-- we were already going 65 or so he is limited to 55 in California. I sped up a little to block him from killing someone and actually saved him from a ticket because he slowed down and got behind me.

I don't speed up and block people to create videos. I just drive the legal speed limit and my video dash cam happens to catch an inordinant number of people doing stupid things with their lack of anger management.