Steepest grade you ever pulled or went down.....

Ran the haul road out of Fairbanks for awhile, Yes the one on Ice truckers, It has 12 &14% grades. lots of them. A lite load was grossing 60,000 90-92,000 was the norm. as spent 2 years running a 359 with a 40 end dump at mine up there hauling gold ora from the satellite site to the crusher. Had two step hill's one 16% the other 18%. The 16% was 2 miles long and you would start out at 35mph with 100,000lbs.

 

And what was the speed at the end of that 2 miles?

 

LOL I don't even want to know.

I'm guessing close to the negatives

 

138 in Quebec from Quebec City to Sept Isles. Sept Isles may not be the end of the world but you can see the end of the world from there. It follows the St. Lawerence River on the North side. In the summer you can run the South side and catch a ferry over but I went in the winter. There are many 8 & 10% that aren't marked, just the 12 & 14% ones. That whole road is a series of two lane hills with a little hamlet at the bottom of each one that prevents you from getting a run at the next adverse grade. At Taddoussac the road ends and you catch a ferry for a 20 minute ride and the road resumes. The ferry ride wasn't bad going up in daylight but coming back I crossed at night. There were chunks of ice the size of a small bungalow. They would hit the side of the ferry and we would go scooting sideways. I kept thinking "Titanic! We are going down with the loss of all our lives!!"

If you are going over the speed limit and meet the police they turn on the red lights, you slow down and everyone carries on. I saw this happen several times, once with me.

One of my guiding principles rules of life is not to make any decisions before my third cup of coffee in the morning. When I took this load out of Spokane I violated my principles. I was thinking Trois Riviers where I always got good paying loads out. I was half way across the continent before I realized I had messed up in a major way. People don't get into trouble because of their limitations, only when they don't know them or try to exceed them.

They told me they had another 27 loads going there and I could have them all. I politely declined and told them I was pretty sure they would have 27 different trucks hauling them. I might be 9 logs short of a load but not stupid enough to do that twice.

 

3rd low on an 18 speed doing about 10mph. Had a 600 horse cat 3406E. Great power, got 2.3 mpg.

 

Kabar's right on with that one and lets not forget in the middle of alot of these grades the road also has sharp blind corners. two in half mile is one of the worst for grades.

 

Ooo I remember a place like that on some backroad in PA, we were delivering to a walmart place up there and this backroad was something else, felt like it was all downhill, and some of the 'curves' were actually left/right turns as far as I am concerned.