Siskiyou Summit, Interstate 5, Oregon

When fat and heavy I have run that shoulder as a courtesy to other drivers. If you don't you will get into that stupid up hill drag race with other truck drivers and before long you will have a traffic cluster ####.

It is illegal, but no Oregon cop will say a thing to you. And if you are stupid enough to hit something while traveling at 20mph up hill, you should not be in a truck in the first place.

 

20mph? Holy Moly. A 400hp/40t truck can beat that. And I thought 38mph in a 105k truck was slow.

 

Some of you made the case of using shoulder to pull when slow and 4ways. Ive done it too. It's not too often that I find myself using that shoulder to allow some of the other bigger pipes to get by. Generally that stopped when I was issued 500 or larger detriots and such and got strong enough to run upgrade loaded close to the legal speed. Back in the days of big cam 3,4's and 300's it was sometimes using that shoulder upgrade to let others by.

My first post was triggered because all I saw to that point was mr dirty face passing on the right. Frankly that's not acceptable. What is to do when there is someone actually pulling at 20 or broke down in front? There they are. If you wanna pass, do it on the left, last I saw of that area there is plenty of left to use to pass. Wait your turn LOL.

The last time I used a shoulder was near scranton. PA DOT put up a nice big sign on that rail near scranton on the new road. It left a nice set of marks down the right side of the trailer I was pulling. I won't be doing that again.

 

As someone that has climbed up & down the western US for years, and many, many times on that exact pass, put your 4 ways on, stay in the travel lane.
Don't worry about what anyone thinks.
When something goes bad for whatever reason, you're legal.

 

I run that stretch pretty often. For me it's not always easy to pick the right response to conditions, it's not black and white. Not quite. I'm usually dragging a box full of ag product, and pretty heavy. The "correct" choice is the right side traffic lane, for sure. However, if there's a little heavier traffic flow, if vehicles are piling up behind me, I'll sometimes pull onto that shoulder and let it clear out behind me - note: it's so common in Oregon that the Detroit Stripe is fully visible, so I'm not the first and not the last. I don't know, but it just seems more safety oriented to let faster vehicles proceed than to block the lane because of a rule or a stubborn adherence to an idea. What I say, what I do.

When I do that, I pay strict, more focused attention on what's coming up, if a corner narrows the lane, if some truck or vehicle is stopped there, if there's something laying on the shoulder, like a tree, so on. It's definitely more risky.