Winter Driving Stories

Did you give him a sermon for telling you that you was going too slow?I would have.Similar thing happened to me on on a 4lane hwy,Bullhauler got on the cb giving me a real hard time for going too slow.It was windy and white out conditions.Dont know why he was so worried just pass me.Which he finally did and ended up in the ditch.All I could think about was glad he was empty.After seeing no serious damage it served him right.

 

I blow folks doors off all day long running up north in the winter as regularly as i do in MT,ND,MN,ID and WY. I wonder how sad they all are when they never see me in the ditch.

I ran down the Continental divide in MT fairly regularly this last winter (6 mile 6% grade). They normally do a good job maintaining it, but the plow trucks were running a little slow this day and the East side of the mountain was covered in ice and snow with no recent sanding done.

I knew i was in for one helluva ride when i was at the summit staring down the side of this mountain as it was only 10* so the ice wasn't real sticky yet. I put er in 5th gear and set the jake brake to it's lowest setting which fully loaded held me at 12mph. Every 1/2 mile or so the drives would start to slip and the truck would begin to jack knife as it slid down the mountain. I had my seat on the floor so i could feel every little thing that rig was doing and my foot just hovering over the throttle waiting to disengage the jake's with my other foot hovering over the service brakes. So as the drives started to spin and my speed started to increase i would disengage the jakes with light throttle as to straighten out the trailer and once it was straight i would gently apply my service brakes to get er slowed back down to 12mph and repeat the process.

I ran it on the shoulder a couple times when the service brakes weren't working real well. The fresh powder on the shoulder really helped with traction vs the smoothed over ice in the drive lanes from all the traffic.

It took some time, but we got down that mountain and kept on trucking. Just another winter day in Montana was all.

 

Probably my 2nd favorite story this whole last winter was up in MT running East on I-94. The road was covered in solid ice like it normally is during the winter, but it was -20* and i was 78k so traction wasn't a concern. I was cruising along at 55mph and a swift truck in the right lane was doing 10mph in the slow lane with chains on as we approached a little hill. He got on the CB and told me i was going to fast and i was going to wreck. Then he proceeded to swerve into my lane nearly running into the median before swerving back the other way and nearly hitting the ditch. I kept on cruising and up on top of the hill was a prime truck running with chains at 10mph just the same and a CRST truck on the side of the road chaining up.

I stopped just ahead at the Pilot in Miles city to grab some fuel and it was packed with Mega carriers all parked and crying to dispatch about how it wasn't safe to drive. I told em if this wasn't safe to drive ya'll better hunker down because it's not changing till Spring LOL.

#### southerners and flatlanders in Montana during the winter are pretty amusing. Nothing wrong with Ice long as it's cold enough and your heavy enough.

 

i'll drive in anything, only thing I won't deal with is ice.
After spinning out.. sliding a few times with zero control, no way I'm dealing with that again.
It's just not worth the risk.
Not even just on my end but crazy drivers on the road.

Last winter I was in Vermont on a two lane (one each direction) road and a Subaru was sliding sideways along side my trailer, came close to them sliding under my trailer.
I hate winter.

 

Ramblingman= overconfident accident waiting to happen

 

I'll add you to the list of

^^^^ these guys.

It takes confidence to drive a big rig all across North America by yourself with little to no support in all weather conditions. This is why even the most timid of people will become far more confrontational and assertive if they last long driving a truck. You need to be a problem solver confident in your abilities to make it in this line of work.

If i didn't believe in myself i probably would have had a nervous break down going down the continental divide like the 2 others behind me. One stopped several times on the shoulder in a panic and then realizing there was nowhere to go, but down got back out on the road to try it again. He stopped 5 times before he reached the bottom.

You have to respect mother nature, but you can't fear her. The fear will cripple you.

 

when winter strikes natural gas wells, it's like ice road trucking on a 10 miles ice covered dirt road.

 

The only time I got shut down last winter due to ice was on I-10 in Louisiana of all places. I was the vampire on a team with a load headed to Florida when I took over the wheel just east of Houston. I looked at the weather maps and saw there had been an ice storm ahead, so I looked at options for stopping and thought I'd go as far as I could before stopping and if it wasn't bad I'd mosey on through.

In Beaumont, TX the freeway was shut down just before the elevated section. Smart move with temperatures below freezing and a "touch" of ice on the ground based road already. However, the detour off the freeway soon became a choo-choo train of trucks with a few cars and nowhere to go except follow detour signs meandering through neighborhoods.

At one point there was a dark dirt lot and quite a few truckers pulled off into that, but it didn't look like an attractive option so I kept following the detour. Now there were fewer trucks and almost no cars.

Then the detour came back to I-10. "Great!" I thought. This means only the elevated section was closed and we're getting back on.

The detour went under the freeway and took the left turn onto frontage road and the two trucks I was following just kept right on going on the frontage road. "What the heck? The on ramp is open." Oh well, they must be holing up and out of hours. I got back on the freeway.

It WAS getting pretty slick and I slowed on down to about 35 mph. It was real dark and I wanted to judge the road surface according to oncoming headlamps.

So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then it dawned on me...

... I hadn't seen another vehicle of ANY kind for over half an hour!

Doh!

Now I was thinking this wasn't such a good idea, but there wasn't anywhere to pull over safely. I had to soldier on, keeping it real smooth. Running up and over that bridge was a challenge, both to gain enough speed to top out without slipping and then to let 'er run and pick up speed down the other side because there wasn't any way to brake on pure ice.

By the time I finally came to an exit with a truck stop after about an hour of the excitement I was more than ready to call my shift early. I took the slight downhill exit in low range at about 10 mph and that was almost too much to handle to be able to slow enough to make the turn at the bottom.

I parked in the only dry spot available, in a fuel island. The lot was packed. I left the truck in the deserted fuel island (who would be fueling on a night like this?) and walked the entire lot to see if there were any open parking spaces. The ground was covered with about 1-2" of solid ice and I wished I had some of those crampons, but made it around the lot and found ONE parking spot toward the back.

I went back and drove the truck slowly around the lot and did my forward setup in granny low in the tight yard, then fortunately got it into the hole on the first try.

We were parked there for 36 hours, waiting for I-10 to open.