Jacknifed today when using the Jake Brake!

Well it wasn't bad. Nothing worthy of the road diner.

Was headed west of Souix Falls looking to get on an intersecting ramp with another interstate. Roads were plowed, but not salted. It was about like 22 degrees out and a fair amount of wind.

Came to my off ramp. I had let it coast down to 35mph then I moved right. It was a 25mph ramp so I wanted to slow more. I gave the jbrakes only 1 click. It started to slow and I felt that zero gravity feeling and my tractor slide to the right maybe 45 degrees or less. It happened so fast and it was dark I am not sure what my trailer did I could really see in mirror. It felt a little like I was flapping to the right like it wanted to answer my corrections but couldn't quite do it.

Anyway I took off jakes and it came back under control. The whole thing only lasted about 4 seconds or 5. I tried my pedal brake after that by pumping and slowed it more then the Jake brake worked after that.

Rest of the night went without incident and I got parked.

I am confused how that happened. I was gentle with the controls and I did not use service brakes at the same time?

That was a bit of a storm that blew through up here. Had to push a 4-wheeler out of snow stuck on a different on ramp earlier. Another trucker behind me waiting helped too.

 

I thought that 1 click on the jakes would be fine. Esp. Since I planned the approach and let it coast to a slow 35mph. But obviously something went wrong there. The service brakes worked better. The rest of the day and in even worse conditions earlier the Jakes worked fine.

 

I only had two pallets in my trailer about on the drives. Not heavy at all.

It was kind of like a shake. I am sure my trailer moved to the left a little, but not sure how much it was doing that I was mostly looking forward... Or technically off to the right I guess, lol.

The car behind me didn't back off at all. When I looked behind me he was still right there on my tail.

 

Well thats good to know. Sometimes those dock people like to load the trailer weird. One time I opened the doors and the trailer was loaded fine until they got to the end by the doors then they decided to build a mountain of cheese or whatever it was. But that wasn't what I was doing here. I was doing pick ups.

 

And earlier that day in ND I was doing about 45 on an interstate. I was snowing and a lot of powder blow over on to the road. I had a whole parade of 4wheelers behind me following like ducklings.

A Truck torpedoed by me doing like 60 or more. The backdraft from his trailer all that snow blinded me 100% for like 15 seconds! Maybe it wasn't that long, but it felt like forever. I couldn't see ####. By the time I could I was in the left lane heading towards the ditch. I corrected and the truck slide a little bit.

I probably should have shut down for the day maybe. If you can't see that's just not good