Downhill in Winter

I’ve learned this while I ran LTL. I got this from vets that been running I-70 in Colorado for 15+yrs. I generally now ride my breaks down hill. Gear down to a safe speed whatever your comfortable with and ride the brakes around 10-15psi on the brake gauge. If I feel it speeding up I lightly add more pressure. I can do this by feel now without a gauge. Remember light pressure. I Do this running doubles down a grade and i never see the name of the side of the trailer. Even on snow packed
Loveland pass. Your on the brake so your not jabbing them to make a sudden braking which causes jackknifes. It’s too cold and rolling too slow to heat the brakes. Might smell when you get down the hill though but won’t smoke. Never had brakes smoking. I’ll run down Vail pass at 35-45mph and won’t smoke em.
I try to keep the rpms under 1500 too.

I started doing this cause one night my jake was stuck on the lowest setting and I thought that especially with a weak jake I’d be fine also. Boy I was wrong started sliding down Sherman hill in Wyoming. I don’t know how I made it down but after that I don’t like using the jake in snow. Jake is fine but if it slips you got to be ready to recover. It felt like it took 10 hours to get down a 5 min hill.

 

In the old days you come up in a gear and you get down in that same gear or lower. (Slower)

If shes Icy and you have a manual, you come off the summit really slowly. On ice I myself usually do no more than 15 in interlock and very little jake stage two.. because anything more will stop the drives from rotating and slide you clean off the road. In fact, on straight ice it's sometimes best to wait on the mountain up at the rest area or brake check area until the sun comes up to melt things a little bit. The theory is if you can walk on it without falling down, you can drive on it.

A thought on the jake, I do not use it very often. In fact it's foolish to have it on at all. I do have a reason why I do it now and then but it's beyond the scope of this topic.

I will come down that hill so slow it's not funny. I don't give gravity a chance to take it away. I don't care if there is 10 feet of wet ice under there, it will make it to the bottom if you are slow enough.

Autos need to be in a manual mode and kept in a carefully chosen gear all the way down. That is my solid position on them. Anything else and additional fancy tech is folly on ice. The truck does not know it's slippery.

For me I love the winter mountains and run em ice and all. What I really hate is the deep south when there is a ice storm at the bridges big and small. They ice over, people get between trailer and rail and slowly get crushed. So you stop at every bridge and wait to clear out the slidies and then get across alone at something like dead idle all the way across in the lowest gear. If it is really bad, there is no point in trying, you find safe haven and wait a while.

 

No Jake brakes, you want 10 psi or less on the brakes all the time. Here is a big one people get wrong or never talk about.

You want LOW engine RPMs going downhill. Because if the trailer starts to slide and jacknife and comes around the tractor. Their is only one way to save it ! You step on the pedal and pull the trailer downhill and get it back behind the tractor. Then your in control and apply the brakes again.

Remember the skidding or sliding tires ALWAYS want to be the leader. So keep the tires spinning and with lite steady brake pressure 10 psi or less and you will avoid problems.

When going downhill will look to see if all the tires are spinning if not the ones not turning will want to come out and be in the front of your tractor. That's not a good thing, that's jacknife going downhill hill.

Never let the trailer push your truck around a corner. You always pull the trailer. The trailer will always wants to go straight. So it will push your tractor out of the way and keep going straight unless you pull it.

 

Best advice yet!

 

Regarding the slides, you are not going to have time to do anything at all except just do what you need to with the tractor to get it back asap. There is a certain angle at which it's beyond saving if you wait too long before reacting to a breaking loose 18 wheeler on ice. If you are really quick you might be surprised at how little wheel it takes to get the tractor biting again even as your mirrior fill with your own trailer and a dark shadow comes down around you.

Brandt's low RPM setup in a certain gear to have it like that is a good thing, just remember that once the engine wakes up and applies enough power shes going to spin those drives. Don't think she wont try it. But the low rpm setting with the right gear will give you a chance to get her straight.

If your tractor has a trolley, sometimes applying just a touch of it to extend your trailer against your 5th wheel downhill provided you are relatively straight helps sometimes. But trolleys are rather insensitive and as soon your trailer wheels stop rotating, she is coming around.

Sometimes you have to do things (Look at the low rpm setting again...) with the tractor to keep her on the mountain. If you crossed Mount Eagle you noticed the sloping of the pavement to one side or the other. Either slide you right off the mountain over the edge or slide you across two lanes of traffic into the rock cliff on the left. When it's icy, she is going to slide as a whole unit you will need to be ready to point the tractor sort of against it and apply just a smidge of power to keep it all more or less moving along the right lane you are now covering. It's hard to explain.

If you are empty, I don't care if you are God and invented trucking (You also invented the best ice...) you must come off that summit really slowly. And be very very very gentle with that rig all the way down. If you spill your coffee you cannot be dancing in that cab, take the burn. You will find that you can get down the worst of grades on ice of the most horrifying type scared but whole and intact. It's ok to be scared, that showed you are human. The power is in your mind to focus and make rational decisions without allowing that fear to take you over.

 

There is good & some not so good advice here. Steep & slick is relative to your experience. Anyway, look for loose gravel,ect for added traction. Power "brake" off of grades. If all else fails in your decent put your trailer in the bar ditch & grab your johnson. No the one on the dash! God forbid you throw Iron before going off the hill. Ok I'm going drinking I mean skiing. Good day yall.