Trailer brakes

Until you get an overzealous DOT guy who writes you a ticket for brakes, and it turns out the ticket is false. Or he puts you out of service for them.

I had a guy try it with me. After getting a level 1 he tried to give me a ticket, I told him the ticket was false. He tried to put me out of service. After calling him a dumb twit and to get his supervisor while I call the cops to press charges he backed down.

I've had this happen twice now.

 

Both instances were over the issue of the 2 main styles of type 3030. They look almost identical aside from 1 thing that gives away long or short stroke.

Just trying to save everyone trouble.

 

Not true, I hooked to a trailer about a month ago. Had ice somewhere in the service line, I could charge the brakes and they would release but then I had no service brakes on the trailer. Everything on the emergency side appeared to be working fine, they would release and lock again with the knob. Glad I had the trolley to test them...then I talked to maintenance.


Several years ago, at PFS (McLane) Their wisdom did not include trolley or jake brakes. I like to use the trolley during my pretrip to check brakelights (IF the handle stays...) Otherwise, in the dark, you can kind of see something light up back there when you step on the pedal... So I ask the boss one day, "how we supposed to check our brakelights?" He says, "Don't the brakelights come on when you pull out parking knob?" No (brakelights would come on with parking brake on some Macks, which we had none...)

Anyways, they ended up mounting a giant convex mirror to the building so we could go by it and see our brakelights in the reflection...

 

I was always under the impression it was illegal to pull a trailer if you had no means of applying the service brakes independently of the tractor.

Motor Vehicle Act Regulations

See 6.07 (4)

Now I read that section and many will look at it and say "well subsection (a) means the red dash button" The dash button does not control the service side of the brakes, it is on the supply circuit and controls the parking brake circuit of the trailer. This was how it was always explained to me. I may very well be completely wrong on this.

 

6.07
(4) Every truck or truck tractor equipped with air brakes, while used to tow a commercial trailer, shall be equipped with not less than 2 means of applying the service brakes of the commercial trailer.

You need a trolley by law.

Remember service and emergency are two different systems.

 

I'll just point out that regulation that is posted is Canadian, not American.

 

Would it still not apply to any American truck operating in Canada though?

 

There's a possibility that it could be required to cross the border but I'm not sure. The posted regulation also only applies to British Columbia and is 8 years old, some things have probably changed by now.

I personally don't understand why a company wouldn't have a hand brake (trolley brake), it's like $20 and can potentially save them millions.

 

Too many nimrods misuse them ... It's safer and cheaper to not have them.