Monteagle downhill May 24

Thanks, my sinuses needed a good coffee cleanout.

 

Me too. If you climbed the grade and turned around and went back down, this might work. Otherwise, you need to keep a notebook to make note of your climb gear to refer to next week or next year when you go back through the opposite direction.

Until you've been back and forth a few times, err on the side of caution and use good common sense and learn to look ahead and "gauge" what the descent is doing. If you see it curving down ahead, might assess your situation and determine if you need to slow more based on what's currently going on.

 

In inverse order:

Of course it is.

Yeah but adages, axioms, aphorisms, well...

 

Many of us know and understand this. However there are many hearing things while in school or early phases of training that are presented in a way that indicates it's a hard and fast rule. Novice trucker wannabes telling other novice trucker wannabes what they heard from a friend who heard it from a plumber who heard it from a landscaper who heard it from a doctor who heard it from a new truck driver.

 

Amatuers teach amatuers to drive like amatuers.

 

At the trajectory the industry is currently going, the "breed stock" for truck driver trainers is going to be crap and useless in about 15-20 years.

I can't imagine what it's going to be like on the roads and truck stops 20 years from now. Glad I'll be dead and gone before the last vestiges of quality and professionalism in truck drivers disappear

 

That adage was also started in the day ofthe 280 Cummins and the 318 Detroit.

 

We've seen improvements everywhere ... except in mankind. In mankind it been a steady decline, with each new generation.

 

in a time way back people used to say look for where the truckers stop and eat they know where the good food is and before the chains came in that was true but no longer. ... if you don't believe me look how crowded the loves and pilots are ..... my dad always told me to go down in the same gear you came up in and back in his driving days that was more or less true . but not today ... it's a lot harder to smoke your brakes now than it was even in the 80s when I started and I have heard several truck drivers say that the ramps are from a day gone buy and no longer used .. not sure how they explain the tracks on the ramps ..... there is a good % of drivers out here now that we're trained by trainers that were trained by trainers that really weren't driving long enough to know what they are doing so who is really to blame. ..... then you put them on a 62 mph truck and the only time they can play cowboy is down mountains and in construction zones. ... ... the fog is what makes fancy gap so bad ... I had one time were it was bright sunshine on top and about halfway down around the curve there were 2 cars in front of me in both lanes hit the fog and just flat out stopped I wasn't that heavy and I didn't have any trouble stopping but was ready for the pile up ... got on the cb just waiting for the 90 day wonder flying down the hill ... but didn't happen. .. the new guys are taught not to use the cb and most don't have one ... that fog is on that hill a lot a seems to be worse when it's sunny on top

 

I remember when I was a child and every time all the old people would gather together they all praised the younger generations and carried on about how all the young people were smarter than them and how the world was going to be better off once they were gone.