About Triples

The endorsement is doubles/triples. No different regulations other than states that allow them and states that don't. You would be best learning from someone with experience, but I have never heard of a training timeline with them. Some companies that pull doubles or triples do have opportunities for those interested in pulling them. Doubles is what you will see the most of though.

I pulled doubles during my 6 week training time with the company I started with. Didn't mind them too much, but it was clean roads, good conditions. Don't think I'd want to go there during winter with crappy roads. Too much room for things to go wrong.

 

I pulled both doubles and triples many years ago (in the 70's). The company trained me on the job. Later after CDLs were introduced and I was grandfathered, I got my endorsements. Pulled again very short period. No one asked me for a certificate or anything. I've never heard of a school teaching doubles or triples, but then there's lot's of things I don't know.

 

We run them in Ohio and Indiana out here and I don't know if it's company or state policy, but we need to have five years experience pulling doubles to pull triples.

 

Jake,

I do believe that would be company policy because your endorsement is for doubles/triples. You are already licensed for them legally. Company policy is a different matter. They can require anything they want before allowing you to pull their equipment. Here in the southeast we aren't allowed triples by law and in SC only a very limited amount of roads are legal for the doubles. We had one driver get a ticket for pulling doubles on a road here in town that was the official Conway route for 18 years. They had to change the route after he got that one. We are currently pulling a set on a regular basis to make pickups at a customer that is loading pups for us. The route that we are using is illegal. When I pointed this out to management and what the legal, longer route was, I was told we'd do it until we got caught and HAD to change it.

 

It could be but in regard to triples, it might be required by Ohio that you have 5 years worth of doubles to pull triples there - I never asked where the five years came from.

I've never run into that out here. Pa has some roads that restrict doubles but I was never in a situation where I had a set and needed to use the road. When I was in the city, I always had a 53'. I had to use a lot of 10 ton roads but you're legal on it so long as you're making a local pick up or delivery. Being that you're on a city run and not line-haul, there's really no set route you have to take. I had a pushy dispatcher when I was on P&D but he would never tell us we had to do something illegal. Even on line-haul out here, they have the routes but have never had any trouble if I wanted to take a different route. We have some alternate routes that are a lot longer but we can use them especially in the snow to avoid some hills.

 

Back in the 90's I worked for Apex in a mine in Trona, we used to pull quads off the salt lakes back into the processing plant, all off highway. But they looked like the never ending story in the mirror. The plant put a stop to the trip's and quads. I don't know why to my knowledge no one every had an accident with them.

 

Probably should keep this to myself but we've hooked some stupid combinations in the yard just because we could..haha.. We found that once you get to a certain point building/keeping air becomes a problem as does the wrong person seeing you with a 53' on the back of three pups..lol..

I always wanted to hook like 15 pups together on a Saturday morning for the Monday morning crew to see but it's really not possible because of the air loss.. If it was possible we'd have done it and parked it in front of the office..lol.. Probably would have been fired too so thank God for air loss right..lol..

 

Jake, you could hook them.... just not be able to move them. So just start hooking them where you intend to leave them. Now don't go and get fired for it.