8% grade

Or if it's snowing, you are super-light, and you touch the brakes (luckily I didn't have to).

 

Hahaha. No.

 

Really hard to wrap my brain around that scene considering that I just put a new AC compressor on my truck today because it's hot out.

 

I just went down Monteagle today. I was easing down about 35 mph, letting the Jake hold me back. Everybody flew past me like I was sitting still, running 55+ and smoke a boiling. There was also a nice brake aroma near the bottom and tracks going up both escape ramps. What idiots.

 

I pull up a 12% grade at 90K regularly, and it has a switchback in the middle. Any kind of gravel, snow or ice, and you spin out and lose most of your momentum. Then you're crawling the rest of the way in first.

There's a short drop off at the farm that's 18 %. I have to go to low range when I climb it. Empty.

 

Nothing against you m16ty you did well with that mount eagle run. Put me right inside your passenger seat too.

Im sorry that the fellow truckers are getting too impatient to run it correct.

Im sorry the escape ramp are filling up. That's interesting.

Im sorry I stand and look upon those drivers who really should have either been trained better, loosened up in dispatch scheduling or stop not caring about a mountain run. Are they too stupid to understand that Mt Eagle can kill them and a dozen families around them so easily?

 

I run mt eagle quite often. It's no problem if you got a couple brain cells, but i don't think I've ever come down it without folks blowing past me at 60. There is a blind curve at the bottom headed east. If there was any type of congestion around that curve they would have no hope of getting it stopped in time.

 

I'm not so sure lack of training is the problem. There are signs everywhere at the top telling you to slow down that my 8 year old can comprehend. I think it's just not caring. You can blast down it without incident if you don't care about your brake wear and if there's not some sort of backup where you have to stop. That's a lot of "ifs" and the second one is a big one.

I go over Monteagle a few times a year. I always look at the escape ramps and there is always tracks running up them. I always like to see how far they run up it. It must do a pretty good job, I've never seen tracks make it over half way. All I've ever seen is tracks though, never seen a truck actually hit it or a truck sitting in it.

 

You are right. The drivers do not give a eff on Mount Eagle. If it kills them then it's cleansing of our Culture until true professionals are left.

Given a straight down run with no curves or traffic, I love to open up a big dollar truck and take her to about 135 or so downgrade if possible. Taste some of that slight negative gravity. But it's really hard to get a big rig past 125 downhill. Unless you are on some crazy stupid hill like 21% I talk about. Then you will learn that Nature has no barrier to 200 plus as you are approaching a very bad death.

Even a nice gentle 6% with a run out will impose almost two to three G load on your suspension as you go from downgrade to level or worse slight upgrade. (Sometimes built in to assist those running for a momentum upgrade pull...) That turns your 80,000 pound truck to between 150,000 and 220,000 briefly. I don't know of anything on earth that builds truck that strong.

 

135...and you talk about dangerous drivers?