Do you Chain up, or pull over and wait?

I keep rolling on the chains. You just got to take it easy. Roll 25mph on pavement. You can check the app to see if the next hill requires chains. I would chain up at the tunnel then unchain at the bottom of vail many times. Then you drive 100 miles west and it’s dry. Why would you shut down? That’s a lot of money lost. Been many times snow is just on the mountain and the rest is dry. There are few occasions it’s the whole trip but that’s like once or twice a year. Plus if you guys want to do LTL linehaul they run until the roads closed. Driving in Snow is part of the job unless you drive a certain radius or states. But if you want to make money and not go broke you’ll need to slap some iron on. Chains is just another day for me.

 

You're company is smart

 

Unless you get paid to wait it out

 

Well lucky you. Yeah LtL’ers don’t have this option. Only option is to burn sick days. If they think it’s doable your rolling.

 

Would explain why they have so many in the ditch.

Walmart pays us either way. $25 to throw chains ( guys down here will do it if there is ice in the dock. Me I just have maintenance throw salt) or pay us to wait it out.

 

the next fault code that comes up on your dashboard, text it to somebody and see if they're just as confused haha

 

This is just ridiculous on it's face. half the time chain light are up, the weather [and roads] is fine well beyond the other side. Road conditions in the small picture and weather reality in the big picture is too often two different things.

That said, I don't like to run snow/ice covered roads at night or during the peaks of winter storms (chains or otherwise) but as a cross-country driver, I monitor weather and plan accordingly to the extent I can, and you'd be surprised at how much grief you can avoid with a little planning and trip adjustment.

But Wyoming is a classic example of one of those places you can typically suck it up for a few hours during bad conditions and safely be on your way the remaining 1,000 miles, else, your stuck for a minimum of 24 hours lost time.

But, when winter precipitation and Wx conditions are bad, one has to use their judgement. One can get in trouble simply for being at the wrong place, wrong time, when someone else screws up, so when you drive over Elk Mountain during a typical windy and snowy event, you have to assume certain risks. You may have relatively good traction, and others, not so much. But here, this is not a matter of chain or not, it's a matter of trusting in your skills and luck, or not. I never assumed all risks could be avoided in this job.

 

Yeah single axle with a set of pups isn’t fun on ice. Might as well drive a sports car on summer tires in the snow. I ran a twin screw with my old company so I was comfortable with running in snow or ice. But I’ve chained on flat land in Wyoming cause it was so icy and I was loaded light and backwards it was fish tailing too much for me. Probably the hardest night on the road in my career.

Walmart is one of the best about doing this. If I worked at Walmart I’d shut down. With a strict safety policy I wouldn’t even try.

 

One of the reasons our company has kept the good customers we have is because we get the load to them regardless of weather. That means chaining up.
It's just part of the program and the drivers know it when they hire on. They get paid by the hour and we keep good chains on the trucks.

Like I said in another post, nobody likes it but it's just something we deal with.

 

I wonder if all the guys that say they shut down when chains are required are the ones parked in the chain up area so the people that want to put chains on have to do it halfway in the travel lane