Downgrades east of the Mississippi that really get your attention

7 mountains isn't bad at all. That's where I learned to come down mountains without a Jake brake. It's also where I learned to drive in snow.

Sideling Hill in Maryland on 68 is the hill that I really respect.

 

several times a year i see a truck laid over at the bottom of the big hill (northbound) of the spur on ky 9, aka the aa highway. it’s a wide, good road with ample signage and lazy curves. unsure of the grade(s) but there are 2 big hills. nothing crazy but people still find a way to botch it.

earlier this year i saw a pickup truck that had somehow rolled over in the roadway and landed on its tires in the ditch. the driver was not sober haha but he and his passenger were ok.

 

I spoke of the gorge in NC. Rumor has it that there are still trucks and cars both way down at the bottom of several of those hills. No wrecker has enough cable to reach them. I also understand the same is true on the PA Turnpike as well. A mountain is a mountain no matter if it is west or east.

 

Anything east of the Mississippi is a hill, west of the Mississippi is a mountain. If you smoke your brakes on ANY interstate grade in the east, either give up your CDL and go stock Walmart shelves, or find a training company and get retrained.

 

No, sorry. Mountains are out west.


Anything else is just a big hill.

 

List of mountain peaks of the United States - Wikipedia
Hmm, looks like the majority is west of the Mississippi...

 

I finally figured out where that hill is.
Those speed limits are way too slow, is it 20mph if you’re headed northwest? If you’re running light or even heavy that is way too slow, but then it’d be so easy to get a 20 to 25 mph over speeding ticket there too.
I like Tom’s truckstop there in Milroy. One of my favorite places.

 

It's only to slow if you are one of these guys that think its impossible for a jake brake to fail.

If you were going down at 40 mph grossing 80k when the wires controlling your jake decided that was the perfect time to rub through and short out you would be done. No way would you get it slowed down.

Jakes are great tools, but they have problems just like every other component in a truck. Don't go faster than your service brakes can stop you.

 

That's why you rely on it doing 99% of the stopping, that way if it fails...you have enough service brake to finish the job or pull to the shoulder. My 1st truck was a small 11.0 Detroit that didn't have a jake, still never smoked a set of brakes.