Winter weather

Drive according to the conditions...getting stressed is dangerous...stay a little nervous. Be prepared and keep yourself and equipment in good shape.

What gets tiring is having to stop because idiots can't keep it on the road.

 

Definetly get tired of it... If conditions are really bad it makes more sense to just pull over and anchor down for awhile versus driving 10mph...

 

in poor weather conditions i try to limit my night driving

 

The worst is when you get Swift or England driving in snow 5mph flashers on in the hammer lane and then about 1000 4 wheelers right behind him cause they are just as scared as he is.... Park it and go to sleep get the heck out of the way

 

I take a lot of flack from other drivers because they want to crawl on the highway and I'm Canadian. We run winter tires and run on snowpack about 50% of the winter.

The only time we slow down is when someone in front of us slows us down. Snow and ice don't bother me a bit, empty or loaded.

The only time we stop for any weather is when there is a solid icepack (no tracks in the ice), we are empty and the winds are above 40mph. The trailer will skate all over the ice and poses serious danger to others. I have driven remote roads in these conditions, as there are stretches of TransCanada hwy with no shoulder and no towns or pull offs for several hundred miles that are prone to huge amounts of lake effect snow.

I don't hate winter nearly as much as I hate other drivers in winter and that goes for truckers as much as 4 wheelers. If you're not comfortable, stop. If you could jog faster than you feel right driving, move over.

 

You hit that on the head.... Wish drivers would actually do this...

 

not think about it til winter gets here. I've been in 114° give or take a few just a smidge north of the southern border. a/c is down. Im just livin it and I'm convinced I don't need to consider how to deal with winter right now. Stay in today

 

Ha! That reminds me one day in January in Atlanta when I walked into my customer's shipping office in a tshirt. She hollers out "oh yea, look at you in short sleeves" and I looked around and realized they were all wearing their coats and scarves and stuff INSIDE! I was taken by surprise and mumbled something about how it wasn't cold outside. It was 32f and a bit drizzly and not a bit of wind. Pretty pleasant.

They said it was crazy cold, the worst all year and they didn't know how they would cope. I smiled and mentioned it had been -38f when I stopped in Bangor Maine for coffee the night before and was met with blank stares.

Finally someone said "-38? You mean like Canadian -38?" Assuming he meant Celsius, I corrected him and said "no, -38 Fahrenheit"

More silence. More stares. Finally the same guy says "you mean, below 0?!"

 

Think OTR winter driving is bad try local with a tanker making heating oil stops. I walked many a drive before trying it with a truck and sometimes not doing the drive. Yep stop signs & lights to try and stop for and hills to go up & down.

Don't drive so slow you are a danger to others but not so fast you put your self in danger and if you feel safer pull over out of the way of others.
Dave ----