Method for tandem sliding?

At night use a flashlight laid on the ground... that's how I learned to build my doubles at UPS....

 

I am good about placing my pry bar to 1 hole beyond where I want the slide to go. Sliding slowly you won't damage the equipment and you get it exactly where you want on the first go.

 

Oh I could.....but I won't!

Such fodder is hard to resist!

This will hurt not to post what I am thinking....we can leave it at PG-13...the thought has been placed!

 

If you have the same type trailers then I suggest this. Do a weigh and a re-weigh for a couple of trips. You'll gain confidence in your ability to judge where they need to be.

 

No, there isn't some hard rule about how much weight is moved for each hole you slide the tandems. It varies with trailer and the load. It can range from about 300 to 500 per hole.

Here's how to see what rule of thumb your trailer and loads will use. When you get your original weight ticket, say at a Cat Scale, write down the current hole location of the tandems, make sure to count the holes in the same way every time. If you slide your 5th-wheel, write down that location also. Now, calculate how much weight you must move off the overweight axle. Say you are 2,500 lbs over on the drives. Slide the tandems toward the tractor say 5 holes and then re-weigh. Compare how much weight shift you accomplished and divide by the number of holes you moved. I used to carry some chalk to mark the original tandem hole and to mark the intended tandem hole for me or someone helping me to slide the tandems. Use this method a few times so see see how much each hole affects your trailer and then you can usually slide the tandems and reweigh only once or twice. I also used this method to see the weight and the effect of empty/full fuel tanks. In my tractor, back then, the fuel weight was almost perfectly split between steer and drive axles.

 

What I do is get the thing weighed first. Then after I get the scale ticket, go back to the tandems and count off how many holes I need to slide and which direction. Then I use my key and scrape a few lines through the dirt/grease to mark which hole I need. Pull the pins, get in truck, slide tandems. Pull brakes. get out and see how close/far I am from where I need to be and repeat that until I get it. If I'm almost at the hole and the pins are behind the space between holes, I'll engage the pins and then slide it until I hear the click, then get out and look one last time to make sure.

For the trailers our company uses, I can figure about 250lbs per hole.

 

heres what i do, you have three weights on your ticket. steers, drives, trlr. look at your drives and your trailer weights, which ever ones higher, subtract the lower weight from. that gives you the difference between your drive and trlr. Now divide that # by 2, this is the amount of weight you actully want to move. With the trlrs that my company uses( wabash ) i divide this number by 225. this tells me exactly how many holes to slide the tandoms. I use a dry erase or grease pencil to mark the hole im sliding to. If your drives heavy, count forward from your pin, if your trlrs heavy, backward from pin. It may seem a little complicated but only takes a few seconds on a little calculator. Rember different trailers have different size holes so you will have to play with it a little and adjust your hole # to match your trlr. I rewieghed a number of times at first to make sure this was accurate, but now I weigh, adjust and go. I actully spend more time getting my scale ticket than I do adjusting my tandoms.
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You do it long enough and you can back the lead with the dolly attached. Makes life a little easier.

 

First let me state that the spacing between the holes is of prime importance. On the trailers that I have experienced with holes evenly spaced 3-4 inches apart, one hole will move APPROXIMATELY 250 pounds. Sometimes exactly 250 pounds. Sometimes a little more. And sometimes a little less than 250 pounds. It all depends on the weight of the items and how they are packaged.
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With that being said, I take the trailer tandem weight and subtract the drive tandem weight. Then divide that by 500. If the answer is positive, that is the number of holes that I INCREASE the trailer wheelbase. If the answer is a negative number then that is the number of holes that I SHORTEN the trailer wheelbase.
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.This works for holes that are evenly spaced 3-4 inches apart. If the holes are evenly spaced 5-6 inches apart, I believe that would move approximately 500 pounds and you should divide by 1000 instead of 500.
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.It is my experience that this method works quite well. The trailer weight will be very close to evenly distributed between the trailer and drive tandems.

 

Do you guys ever have any problems with your tandems sticking? I dread going in to a place where I have to slide my tandems back then up again, or scaling out, because 8 of 10 trailers I get the tandems just won't slide and I end up fighting with them for hours at times.

I try adjusting the brakes, finding wheel chocks to place behind them to hold them etc. but it seems to be a perpetual problem and those methods don't always work. Probably the price I am paying to drive regional and be home every 2 days, the shoddy equipment.