Winter driving tips for truck drivers?

Winter Driving w/o the platitudes.
Winter Driving
Winter driving
Winter weather advice from veteran drivers please!
Newbies!!! It's almost winter!!! Here's some tips.
winter driving, little nervous
Some winter driving advice

 

There’s a good number of threads on the subject here. In the search, type in “winter” and search in Title. Look for the ones with the most posts then take your time reading through them.

Look for common points. Honestly, perhaps 30% of the information posted here in these forums is just bad, wrong, misguided, or bizarre and posted by people who either don’t know what they don’t know, were poorly trained, or who enjoy spreading mis-information. So take it all in with a grain of salt.

Some are being sarcastic and if you’re new here, you may not know what’s sarcasm and what’s not so use your head.

 

Go slower than in rain, soft foot on brakes and throttle, use the highest gear you can while still making headway (less torque), if you are a company driver, they probably tell you to shut down if YOU think it is unsafe. Even if you still have traction, you don't want to play pinball with the goofy 4 wheelers.

The load ain't worth the risk.

 

I liked to run heavier on steer axle in winter. Where allowed, at least. When I had a truck that I could load it to 12500 or so up front. I guess it you have one of these units where the steer axle is almost under your feet and you're heavy up there all the time anyway this probably won't make much difference.

 

If you are not loaded with a good amount of weight, running in heavy snow/ice usually not worth the risk regardless of driving tips.

Freezing rain/rain while remotely close to 32°F air temp means pull over; road temp can be lower than air temp.

Usually try to follow tracks of previous vehicles in snow as best possible, road will usually be slightly warmer/more salted & hopefully have more traction.

Don't get in unplowed lanes (usually the left ones) if you can help it.

Don't stay in packs of vehicles if you can help it.

Don't feel the need to always pass a slower vehicle, better to have someone in front of you than be blazing a trail yourself on a potentially whiteout situation & end up in the ditch.

With that said, keep a good amount of distance in front of your vehicle, there is no such thing as too much stopping distance in slippery conditions.

With that also said, keep your CB on for traffic/incident reports & ignore the "professionals" whining about newbies driving too slow & then blowing by you on unplowed lanes at a higher speed than is reasonable for the environment.

Don't engage them in any argument/conversation whatsoever, people too stupid to adjust driving to the environment don't deserve acknowledgment whatsoever.

Keep your dashcamera on at all times for the inevitable idiot swerving into your lane of travel because he overestimated his chances of making it in an unplowed lane.

 

Hug the fog line so you are are far from oncoming traffic as possible. Make it a all season habit.

 

Up in your neck of the woods that's your only chance to survive the day
Any time of year
Absolutely ridiculous the stunts that get pulled on 11 and 17. The frequent crashes are evidence of that.

 

What you folks think about using the engine brake?
Not saying this is right. 12 years knock on wood no problems.
Sketchy situations use foot brake turn off engine brake ( vice versa )

I rarely run interstates in a tractor trailer. all back road 80,000. engine brake comes in handy. foot brake and engine brake rarely go together

Straight truck roll off dumpster, always 100% engine brake. year round. sure it breaks traction, not enough to say not again.


What's everyone thoughts snow and engine brakes?

 

Would not advise doing that in Western Pa. That fog line is very bumpy or uneven from poor roads and most times , we consider being curb heavy ( makes you lean badly ) it's a no win getting sucked off on shoulder