Grade too steep to restart

Lots of times your better off to be in a gear that will do the job from the start. It’s not a race

 

Happened to me once on a detour off 81 in Pa. Goldmine Rd. I wasn’t heavy just o/s. Got caught in the wrong gear on a switchback. Couldn’t get going again until I locked in the diffs, one wheel just wanted to spin on dry road. My escort had stopped the oncoming traffic, and some guy told her it happened all the time there…usually with a wrecker being called in

 

Going south? I assume this is the switchback that got you?




One of the places I load the previously mentioned coal is just a few miles away. Even if you kinda sorta know the area, states routes are a coin flip away from a long day and four digit roads can be even more extreme.

 

Your picture doesn’t make it look steep at all but it was…yeah I was going south, heading for a galvanizing plant in Lebanon. Couldn’t believe they routed me that way…

 

Gold mine was always a treat, I used to use it as a training tool when working with drivers.

 

Amazing that it’s so well known…I mentioned it to a friend who also does o/s and he said, yeah been there done that…

 

Something I learned pulling heavy loads with a 318 and 5x4:

If it is steep and you know you are going to lose a gear, it's best to take two or three, or just grab one in the main box and be happy.

 

I grew up not far away. Learned to drive truck hauling out of the strip mines just north of there.

 

Even street view never seems to show how steep or bad something is. Then there's other times where I'm looking and like, crap, I don't think I could make that and then it turns out to be laughably easy. Thanks google, for giving me 3 days or panic attacks and dread for nothing!

I did look on street view on your turn, and it looks like it could be a little challenging, but probably only because I already knew you got stuck on it. I've never been on it personally. I always come and go from Wisconisco via Duncannon - 147, 225, 209. Little tight through Halifax and a pretty good climb out of Elizabethville, but it's not bad.

Another one that looks like a time saving shortcut is 54 from Danville to Mahanoy City. Not a fan. Nothing horrible, just skinny and rough. I even took it back through loaded just to see if it really did suck as much as thought on the way in lol.

Nothing ever got me shook up as bad as the dirt road in the hillbilly I was on a year or so ago. When WV puts up a big orange sign saying not recommended for trucks, take heed lol. I thought for sure I was going to end up hooked to a rotator and be a promoted as bonehead trucker of the month that day. Effin' dropped pin pipeline loads. If you ever feel like living a little nightmare, street view the ride on Willard Road, Parkersburg, WV all the way from Ridge Road to route 68. Pipeline was between the switchback and the gun club, but they couldn't unload me there and I had to drag my pipe on down to 68.

 

Yeah I dunno why, but that road seems to have quite the bad reputation. I live about 20 minutes away from there, gone over it more than a few times in a truck, never had any problems. But for a flat lander I guess it could be a chore. I think route 645 between Pine Grove and Frystown is worse.

Just yesterday a truck went up rt 225 from Dauphin to Halifax, over Peters Mountain. There's signs all over about that, but with a full load of lumber, he or she went anyway. They crashed at the bottom in the horseshoe curve.