New to Trucking, Need Advice Please

Hi Hammerdown, welcome aboard, so what you're saying, it's a tandem axle trailer, but the tires are "singled out". I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Obviously, you'd be a fool to load a wagon like that, but empty, in transit, I've seen it done.

 

I thought you went to work for Swift?

 

It is legal as long as the other tires are not on the rims, like they are flat.

 

Be careful. Lots of time they cheap out and buy the 4 cheapest worstest tires they can for a temporary move. Some may be lucky to make it out of the lot before going flat or separating.

 

I'll get out the gauge, eyeball the tires really good. Then check the nuts and so on. Bet you I can find something wrong with it.

But a empty trailer weights only what? 14500 for a reefer or maybe 6000 for a container chassis? A tractor is another what? 14000? call it two steer tires plus 4 single without duals on the drives. total of 6 tires. Times 5000 pounds capacity each, that's plenty for a 70 mile move.

Even if you lost a drive on the way there, the other three will get you there on interlock. It wont be pretty but you can do it.

Me? I rather not. Ive had enough of the auction side of trucking where the equiptment is truly desperate bottom of the barrel. And that's just moving to a barn for a sale hoping it will make it out back to the parking spot 40 yards away.

I rather be on say Cabbage with a failing electrical system during a winter storm and still 40 miles to go somewhere with a nice put together rig without being cheaped out or stripped as you describe.

Any business that tosses tires onto a truck that really should not be on there at all at 10 dollars a tire really should reconsider it's greed for profits. Do you want to be apart of that?

 

I get tired of company and their cheap tires.

I understand new virgins cost more but if you do the math. There's more profit with new then constantly replacing used cheap.

I just blew out 4 used OLD rubber on one drop axle on the trailer. In FIVE days. Every one of them was 6 to 10 years old.

At one point and time. Both sides had new virgin. Don't know what happened to them. I take weekend off and 1 is replaced. Sometime later the other side is replaced. Pisses me off.

 

Er, the Law?

Well... there is your DOT Green Book, Inside that book is the Law to you on Pre-Trip and what the particulars a tractor trailers must have, such as lights, where and how many for example. Tires generally have a DOT stripe in them so when the tread gets too thin and unsafe it will show across tire.

The problem is this. As the agent of a company transporting a commercial vehicle onto a public highway of any kind it falls to you to do a proper pretrip and examine everything. Don't overload your mind on those singled out duals and not see the busted spring hangers up front.... Check everything.

I would imagine this is a sort of pre-trip university for you working in that field. Whatever is possible to be broken will be somewhere on them things. YOU will become the king of being able to find it and maybe even patch it in time. THAT will make you pretty valuable.

I stopped seacan work in the ports partly because of the tires. I was number two when my number one stripped his zipper failure off and I horsed my trailer cutting off a minivan filled with kids about to have that huge long alligator slam into them and hurt them bad. I took the hit instead.

16 hours later my number one is still sitting on the side of the interstate in virginia in the roasting sun, we were shuttling to petro in doswell a few miles hence to get them fluids and food.

I think they made it eventually... I did not see them there the next day. But for 40 dollars day's pay on that run? ugh...