dot violation

Im not giving YOU a hard time personally. I was speaking in general.

If your trainer was any good he will be next to you on the pavement under that adjuster working on it. Or better yet, send you to a brake vendor specific certification course at the Company shop by a qualified instructor capable of issuing drivers certificates so they can legally adjust brakes in a DOT Coop without a repair technician to come out to them. One of my local cement companies here in Arkansas sent a small number of us to that course before allowing us to touch the #### things.

LONG ago we did not have automatic adjusters, you had a 9-16th wrench or a half inch Plus a 5/8th just to be safe to adjust the brakes yourself under that truck when you lost braking power. Your foot goes almost to the floor and she aint stopping until you finally apply a small percentage of what you know is not your full braking. (As your air drains out...) You also had a hammer. You set the brakes got under there and tapped the drums next to the applied brake pads. What you did NOT want in that situation is a bell. DING! DING! DING... adjust me please. it's a fast and dirty way of doing it but its possible.

 

I will try to post a pic later... To answer the rest of your questions, I believe they are custom installed by our fleet trucks, or built to spec. We have mostly Cascadias that are less than 10 years old, but I have seen them on older fleet trucks as well. You don't chock the wheels as you have to engage the parking brake and leave the trailer air supply discharged. I essentially think it is a glorified trolley valve since our trucks don't have trailer hand brakes.

 

That's another reason to encourage you to consider leaving for a different employer that DOES have trailer handbrakes.

Any company that fails to put them in is flat stupid. There are particular situations in which you seriously benefit from having them. It might be the small difference between getting to your destination safely or not at all.

Ive quit two in my lifetime that were found not to have handbrakes in the tractors. You wont believe how useful they are and how lightly you can put a dab of air back there and just to the trailer leaving your tractor more secure against the 5th wheel on ice or free to move your foot from clutch/braking to throttle pedal before it gets any ideas to mash anyone too close behind you on a really steep ligth or stop sign.

 

Of course you are from the old school of trucking when professional drivers weren't micromanaged by their owners and safety dept. I was taught from CDL school(which was a really thorough private program) not to use the trolley valve for any purpose other than a trailer tug test. Then my first OTR job was the same...up until my current gig which is LTL. As I said, they don't even equip them in their trucks for fear that drivers might use them.
However, no disrespect to you, @x1Heavy for saying they are an important tool for better control of the braking of the vehicle. My grandfather was an O.O. and I remember riding down Cabbage with him back in the day. I can promise you he was a firm believer in the trolley valve.
On a side note, my job entails pulling double and triple tandem trailers, and braking with a train is a bit different than a tandem 53'. The air travels from the tractor service brake valve all the way to the farthest trailer axle and then returns before you start to slow. Basically the back box slows first then the middle and lead respectively. This could have to do with why the company doesn't use the trolley valve in the fleet. They are probably afraid that a driver may go into a skid more easily and flip the back trailer due to the sensitivity of the handbrake.

 

Oh I see. Ok. That's one thing I never did on purpose in trucking, pull doubles or triples (That's a story of itself...)

You correctly identified a very good reason not to have the trolley on there with those multi trailers.

Also I did not know that it travels to the rear trailer first then forward. You think the air will get to wherever it gets to first like on a train all the way to the end last you follow me?

I appreciated your story about Cabbage, I am motivated to hear more. I spent some time on cabbage and found it to be a worthy mountain for lack of a better word. Ive always liked running it, even in the dead of winter.

Since you already knew how sensitive those trolleys are there is nothing more I can teach you about them really. You are all over it. Awesome.

Now, I might be a little old. But keep in mind my teachers were using brake systems that don't exist in today's trucks and trailers and so on. Some of those trucks are truly ancient. I feel honored to have learned how to drive them just so. The new trucks today (No offense) is more of a push a button and hold the wheel. Not much driver participating in the drive. Savvy?

I look forward to more posts from you and learn more about the things like doubles and such. I always liked to learn something every day even if I did not agree with it.

 

The schools also teach several things I don't agree with. Not going to say what they are because it is not important or germane to the topic. I used to have a trolley valve and I used it for more then just for tug tests. In trucking there are times when you need to quickly brake a trailer while letting the tractor move. I have used my trolley valve to move tandems with the tandem release up at a dock makes doing that so much easier. That dang trolley valve is part of the truck and like most other parts of the truck you the driver need to learn how to use it properly and do so. I am now retired. However when i was driving I use my trolley valve almost every day. Oh and I was using it properly! I'm an old timer that was driving CMVs when some of you were just small kids or not born at all. I get a bit crotchety when these greenhorns start in on that you aint doing it properly kick.

 

And in defense of Moose1958, some of the younguns need their skins rubbed a little bit with sandpaper. They turned out to be a little sensitive.

I like my young ones a little tougher than the snowflake that has been chirping about this or that being outrageous. We did not have snowflakes when we were kids. We had totally different problems, most of which is either racist or other forms of discriminations not related to the topic here. Half of my life has been around trainables who will never see normal life, buying a home, marrying or raising a family. Or even copulating with the opposite sex at all. So may do not touch and no rules against the poor things. I tend to protect them pretty ferociously.

What I AM concerned about which IS related to topic is that Truckers should learn how a DOT man sees it and then not do it. If you didnt do it DOT man does not see it. Savvy? Second the Companies. It is one of my buttons when a company decides not to install something I know deep in my soul is very useful for driving, maybe NOT the textbook reason WHY I should limit myself to just that. I always have been taught... workarounds or alternative ways of using anything on a big truck. You would be surprised what can be fixed if at all possible using other parts on a truck in a certain way like the steep stop sign scenario or Moose1958's Dock Slide scenario.

In the end I try not to be too stupid. I value older drivers like Moose and others for what I don't yet know. And sometimes I take corrections. That's ok. I might not like it but it's OKAY. Some of the snowflakes do not take correction at all. THAT is a failure of parenting or schooling me thinks.

 

You just be like the Bandit son. When his brakes failed coming down Mont Eagle, he just opened the door and drug his feet.

 

That's one scenario I had planned for many times. Thankfully it never really came to pass. If it did I would have been rubbing that rock wall on the interior of the Median until I got it stopped. Probably rip the fuel tank off there and make a big deal of nothing but I aint falling off that mountain or any other mountain.

The truck was slow enough off that one (Say 18 mph) or in Vermont's Mythical to some 24% grade at 2 mph.. if there was a absolute failure of the braking after a failure in the pulling, I would have bailed out. It wont be the first time I had my feet on the fuel tank half way out the door on the way to escape a falling truck.

Regarding Vermont, I am in contact and waiting for specific information on a hill near the border on one of their state highways. They passed it to the local staffers with knowledge of that area. I should recieve pretty specific information enough to make a thread about it to help those who think I pulled a story telling dream puff about a hill that does not exist and frankly scared about 90% of the kids in school today.

If that can be called truck abandonment on DAC, let's worry about that question after we find out if anyone gets killed or hospitalized.