Winter, to set or set your brakes gamble! Frozen brakes.

That's all well and good if you CAN back up. Many times a wagon will be at the dock or agin a fence and you have to drag it some to begin with. Some are really stuck tight, and just finding some bare ground could be an issue too. I've never had much luck with just banging on the drum, in fact, sometimes banging the shoes themselves didn't work.I know it was expressly forbidden, but I always kept( hidden) a small propane torch with me, and that always worked.

 

I’ve seen a guy drove 70 miles from Tumbler Ridge to Dawson Creek with one axle on the Super-B frozen. He wore through the tires and the rims. Clearly never looked in the mirror once.

 

Just don’t set them is what I learned the hard way a couple times. If it’s cold but dry don’t worry about it. Cold and nasty out why risk being inconvenienced in the morning. Maybe just idle if your truck looses air overnight and you’re worried about the trailer brakes freezing. Have to know your equipment.

if it’s much below 15*F over night don’t even think about shutting it off anyway. Tractor brakes you have to set to bump the idle up to 900-1000 but leave the trailer brakes loose. DEF will freeze at 12* so you want to keep the engine running to keep the tank heater on.

There’s a point somewhere between 15-20*F where the cab heater on full blast all night will only barely cut the mustard and keep it warm enough if it’s one of those little 7500 BTU ones. I don’t like to idle but there’s comes a point where shutting it off becomes not a good idea.

 

They're not in contact with the rotors. Tha pad is held away from the friction surface until you give it air/hydraulic power and force them into contact.

 

so the parking brakes are separate shoes then that pinch out against the inside of the rotor hat? Sort of like a rear disk brake on a pickup?

 

Disc brakes aren’t going to retain moisture so there won’t be anything to freeze the pads to the rotors with. On drum brakes it’s almost always the bottom shoe that gets frozen to the drum because that’s where the moisture settles unless you drag your trailer brakes a little before stopping to dry everything out.

 

A steering wheel holder would've said:
- that's what you get for running recaps (even if they aren't)
- it was starting to roll but occasionally locked up
- I don't get it...I poured 2 quarts of air line antifreeze in the glad-hand (probably not because that would require them to think outside the cab)