Indian River

@JohnBoy gave you some good advice, especially this early on in your career.

Donner is the one that will give you the biggest headache, because they almost always have chain control in effect in the Winter months. Sometimes it will be in effect for multiple days at a time where parking can eat up a big portion of your week. It’s like a giant speed bump in the trip. You will have a clear road on I 80 running top speed until you get to Reno and see the signs “**Chain Control - All trucks must use chains**” At that point, you either park for who knows how long (possibly days) or you try to drive south down a state two-lane highway several hundred miles to go around it in order to get into California, where the roads are back to being clear and wide open. Like I said, it can be a big, frustrating speed bump in the trip when you’re going into California sometimes. If you choose to chain-up and proceed, you’re looking at 30 minutes to put the iron on, then a few hours of driving 30 mph up and over it, five minutes to remove them, and back to clear roads on the California side.

Lookout Pass at the Idaho / Montana line and 4th of July Pass are the other two that will give you problems in the tanker world, since they are both in route to Spokane and Washington state, which is a heavily traveled lane for tankers. Donner is the frustrating one, though, because it’s usually wide open highway until you get right up to it.

Familiarizing yourself with how to put them on is a good skill to learn. Putting one single chain on each side of the tractor makes all the difference in the world when shuttling around in a parking lot dropping and hooking. It might also save you a multi-hour wait on a tow truck sometime. I see trucks get stuck in the Rawlings, WY Flying J parking lot in the Winter sometimes. I’ve also nosed up to a few fellow IRT drivers and chained tow hooks together to pull them out from under a tank in Spokane before, because the parking lot hadn’t been plowed before they tried to drop / hook and they didn’t want to wait for a wrecker or waste company money calling for one. Point being, it’s a useful thing to learn.

 

You’re welcome. There is a Facebook page called CHP-Truckee that is managed by the California Highway Patrol. The troopers who run Donner update it regularly with information about wrecks, current chain control status, etc. It’s a good one to like and follow. I check the page when I’m headed toward Reno to find out what to expect.