A few questions from a relatively new driver...

I'll answer this one - it is a little trick to help when you get sleepy. Driving at night, our bodies produce Melatonin to try to put us to sleep. Sometimes it doesn't matter how well-rested you are, driving at night is inherently unnatural so the prodution of Melatonin, the lack of visual input, and the drone of the road noise will try to lull you to sleep.

I don't know if the dome light interrups the production of Melatonin or not, but it helps me to turn it on if I start to space out a bit. Try it sometime. (Disclaimer - there is no substitute for proper rest, blah blah blah.)

The reverse is also true for night drivers - absolute darkness is essential to get good sleep during daylight hours because light prevents the natural Melatonin production. If you don't have total darkness, you probably won't be able to sleep more than a couple hours no matter how tired you are. Use the bunk curtains if in a sleeper or blackout curtains if you're at home.

I'm a home-daily nighttime driver who learned the hard way and got good tips on how to successfully run at night from night shift veterans. The dome light was one of many tips I got along the way. You'll see this often with drivers pulling doubles at night (LTL linehaul drivers). If he doesn't appear to be looking for something or reading a manifest or some other typical reason for having the dome light on, this is why he's using it.

 

Its kinda like driving a car sometimes you lock the doors sometimes you don't it just depends on the area where you are i often see folks even leave the car running while they jump out and buy something from the quickemart i personally didn't lock my doors if i was close by, only if i was walking a good distance from the truck. With dropping trailers you'll soon learn the hard way if you've got lots of different trucks with different heights of 5th wheel that its always good to leave you landing gear about 1/8 ' off the ground then drop the air bags this makes sure if the next truck goes to hook up it won't be too high. Always always check the clearance of your 5th wheel before hooking up never just back on and hook that's the surest way of leaving your trailer behind on the road somewhere. and the surest way to the road of unemployment.

 

I always lock my doors. Always. Even while fueling.
Always drop air bags when uncoupling. Easier to pull out from under trailer. I will stop for a moment to make sure trailer is still, not falling forward. Just to be sure all is well.

 

the golden rule for mountains you can go down too slow a lots but too fast usually only once ...... had a truck pass me on the grapevine flying with the brakes a smoking and chips with the sirens going he made it down somehow but looked like he topped out over 100 didn't get it stoped for 5 miles .... but knowing how nice the California highway patrol is probably left him with a warning lol ....... the ramps are still used .... and the ramps never bothered me it's the tracks on the ramps that's scarry

 

I always thought it was people that were scared of the dark running with dome lights on ........ I have the red freightliner cab lights on sometimes just too be cool

 

That isn’t accurate. “Jake” type brakes are called compression brakes. They alter to valve timing to turn the engine into a air compressor, causing a load to slow the truck. Jacobs has the “Jake Brake”, Cummins has the “C-brake”, Mack has the “Dynatard”, and there is Pac-brake, just to name a few. These are all compression brakes and some work better than others.

Exhaust brakes are nothing more than a flap to close off the exhaust. They don’t do hardly anything and are almost useless. Most of the compression brake manufacturers also offer a exhaust brake model, but my opinion is not to waste your money.