mercer transportation

Razor is right. But Mercer tarps are cheap for a reason..

 

The way I check my dump valve for the rear axel is by looking at my air suspension gage for the tractor drives. If It's working the pressure will go down on the drives. I would have the breaks off also. Turn off the dump valve and the pressure should increase back to the original setting.

 

How would dumping the air out of a trailer axle reduce weight on the tractor suspension?

 

The front axel on the trailer acts as a pivot causing the see saw effect. reducing the load on the drives.

 

back in the old days, you could be over weight on the drives. Just before you got to the scales, dump the trailer, weigh the drives. Then air up the trailer as you moved forward. As @Highway Sailor said, just like a seesaw

I haven't done that trick in 30 years. Used to be quite good at it, it was an art. Was it fun being an outlaw? It was stressful, but I smile when I think back.

 

Ok. I see how that could work, but would require a lot of the weight of the load to be behind that front axle. Guess this would work with a something like a load of lumber that covers the entire trailer.

 

That's right, I only do it when doing a preloaded trailer swap. The gage won't move a lot but you will see a change .

 

I have thought about that once or twice but chickened out and went around the scales. However I was over height with a plastic pipe load in VA by several inches on the front of the trailer. I activated a highway sign on 81 nb. Pulled into a rest area and measured the load. When I had to enter a scale house I dumped the air for my drives and dragged my mud flaps threw the over height detector. Made it across.

 

I would not expect it to work if you had a load between the drives and the front trailer axel.

 

3 16x24 will cover 48x8load