Winter Mountain Driving Advice Needed

You can do that’s and it works. It seems like an unnecessary risk you are taking or if you don’t want to say risk. An unnecessary extra step.

I don’t want to put word in you post but you said at stage 2 at 20 mph and you got a drive tires to slip if I’m reading it correctly. So you turn off engine brake and slow down to 15 mph and set engine brake to stage 1 and now you had no slipping drive tires and went over Loveland pass without problem.

Here is my point, if you never turned on the engine brake you would have been going slower then 15 mph. We know this because with the help of the engine brake that’s speed you went downhill and no problem. If you were going slower then 15 mph you should have better traction because you would have been using all 18 tires. If you did not lose traction at 15 mph with engine brake going. You wouldn’t have not lost traction going slower using all the brakes.

Turning off the engine brake and only relying on the regular brakes would have forced you to driver slower then 20 mph and you never would have gotten that early warning from sliding drive tires at stage 2. It would have even forced you to you go slower then 15MPH with stage 1 on.

Thats my point is has built in safety already. It will force drivers to go the speed that let you use all 18 tires for most traction and most control.

Unless you come across a part of the road that turns into completely 100% ice and lose all traction and all 18 tires lose traction, you still have control and you still have options to save yourself. Like heading to the shoulder if you lose traction you might get some on the shoulder. If you do lose all control and can’t save the truck and trailer you will be going slower then using the engine bake and do less damage if you slide off the road.

 

It's actually quite likely it'll go straight. The idiots who drag frozen trailer brakes down the highway, is the trailer swinging all over the place? No, because the other 3 corners of the tandem are rolling and thus providing lateral stability.

My real world example from Monday night? While I often had a tire slipping as I hunted for traction down the last 3 or 4 miles of grade, I never once had a skid that required a steering correction.

Skids have a wide range. Minor skids have a very small effect on stability, while a major skid can erase it completely. It's not black and white. And once again, we're using a minor skid to help us from getting surprised by a major one.

I can only imagine how freaked you'd have been when I found the slick spot. Because while I was slowing as soon as I found slick pavement, the drive tires were all kinds of active as the various corners found and lost traction and the diffs sent power here and there. No loss of stability, not out of control, just a fight for traction that let's you know you haven't reduced speed (and therefore energy dissipation) enough for everybody to find traction.

And mostly by feel, which is the hardest part of learning to drive in reduced traction. If you wait until you can see there's an issue, you're already in trouble. Reading the traction levels of the road is a tactile task, not a visual one. Your inner ear does most of the work, that's what is going on when drivers talk about feeling it your backside. Your inner ear detects the slight changes in direction far sooner than your eyes detect it.

 

Ummm, I have a question:

I understand your POV of running a Jake downhill. I understand how open diffs work. What difference does a Jake make on wheel spin or whether or not a diff is open or locked?

 

It's a matter of comfort level on trashy roads, I suppose. Sure, I could go super slow off the grades any time they look slick. But that's eating a lot of time when there's no need, as most times it's near normal speeds. A small wheel slip is a non-event in my world.
Also, I learned to come off grades when few trucks had Jakes, and really have no desire to go back to that tedium, when I have that switch that Clessie gave to us way back in the day that makes life easier.

 

This is the exact reason why i dont bite on these winter threads anymore...theres probably 100+ years combined experience giving great advice for running winter and always one guy that says were all gonna die as soon as the first snowflake falls...

 

I was born and raised in South Dakota, just a flatlander. I moved to Missoula in 1999 with zero experience driving in the mountains. Worked a road construction job for a couple years and then worked at Pepsi slinging pop until August of 2004 when I got hired by Cliff Reed. As a totally green driver for that type of trucking here’s what I did.

At that time Cliff was still running some log trucks. I approached those drivers, asked questions, and listened to their answers. I also did the same thing to the guys who had been running flatbed for him for 10-15 years or more. I asked questions, kept my mouth shut, listened to their answers, and heeded their advice. Never once did I mention my previous driving experience because it wasn’t relevant at all to the job at hand.

By the time winter rolled around I had a couple months under my belt getting a feel for the roads I’d be running all the time. I learned to drive in roughly the same manner as the old timers who had given me advice. They taught me how to read the road surface. Taught me about warm versus cold snowpack. Taught me just to throw three railers and save yourself the trouble that can result from chaining the outside 4. I’d also pick Cliff’s brain from time to time since he’d been running the roads in North Idaho and Western Montana for 40 years by the time I went to work for him.

There’s many different ways to accomplish the same goal at the end of the day. I did what worked for me. I guess it was purely luck that I never wadded the truck up with the engine brake on. Given the chance to truck out there again I’d still drive the way I learned from the old timers. No way I’d ride the brakes all the way off a hill at 105k gross.

 

Winner!

 

WeatherNation on Instagram: "TERRIFYING NEW VIDEO: A semi was spotted struggling to gain traction while approaching the summit of Wolf Creek Pass in Southern Colorado on Wednesday. The semi appears to be meeting all traction requirements of mountain passes, although the state of the truck's tires are unknown. It's also possible the truck may have been too heavy during these conditions as it was reaching apex of the pass."

Can’t see his front drive axle very well but a set of three railers on the back axle would’ve prevented this.

 

I came over Cerro and Blue Mesa late Tuesday afternoon, and they were both building up that hard slush that can get quite interesting with 4 singles. I imagine that's what was down on Wolf Creek, too. That's what it looks like in the vid. Hard enough the inners don't smash through it, soft enough the chains sling it out like cookie dough, leaving the chains spinning in the air.

 

And people look at you like you’re stupid when you explain how this can happen because all they want to do is throw singles.