Drivers leaving landing gear crank sticking out...

Thanks, #######. Next time, crank the legs 'til they touch the ground...

 

When I was at a mega carrier looking for an empty trailer solution one time, they directed me to a specific shipper and a specific trailer number to pick up. When I got there there were about 8 company trailers there. The trailer they wanted me to pick up had the crank handle bent to spit. The trailer had obviously been sitting there for months, expired inspection, spider webs all over etc. So I swapped out the bent handle with the company trailer parked next to it, figure that other trailer is still sitting there. I can only imagine some driver entered the trailer number into the system needing repairs, but the company, instead of dispatching a repair truck would send drivers like me who were in the vicinity to get the empty trailer and fix it themselves. What typically happens is a driver will hook to a better trailer then send a measage to have them hook to the new trailer. Being the big collossus carrier and people not reading the previous messages, the driver would just get dispatched and the broken handle trailer would be forgotten again.

Long story short, i now carry an extra trailer crank up handle in case some idiot dropped a trailer I'm picking up with the handle out and some other idiot backed into it. I run the same trailer all the time now, typically drop it at the terminal for the yard goat to handle while I go to town. Very rarely will they leave the handle out, most of the time they have a goat that picks the trailer up but a couple places they do have to get out crank up/down manually. i guess the guy does so many trailers per day, it is just too much to tuck the handle back down out of the way every time.

 

The reason the crank handle gets stuck is because it is in high gear. What you should do right before hanging it up after dropping the landinggear down is pull the handle out to low gear then tuck it away. This is good in ice cold weather but also heavy reload situation, easy to get the handle turned a little to deploy in crank mode.

 

This is why I carry a bunch of 2x4's. Dump air and put 2x4 on frame rail and air back up. Lower landing gear til touching then dump and and more wood. Repeat as necessary.

If the trailer is too high, i put wood on top of 5th wheel and back under and lift trailer a little then raise the landing gear a little then pull out the wood and hook like normal.

 

I do the same w/ landscape timbers...but that only works if you can get the frame rails under the nose of the trailer. I've run into that situation before, too. It is far easier to crank a trailer DOWN than it is to raise one UP. And with an air ride trailer, if you hook up the air lines and supply the trailer with air, it will lower the nose of the trailer (or lift pressure off the legs if you're already under it). There is no good reason to leave a gap under the landing gear before dumping your airbags. Lower them until they just touch the ground, dump your bags, and pull out.

 

My mentor at Swift was always in a hurry. His drop trailer sequence was to dump the air as he got out to crank the landing gear down. Said it saved 17 seconds worth of cranking down time. Yeah but it screws the next driver no? He would just look at me like I'm speaking klingon. I truly wonder if he knew he was dropping too low or doing it wrong at all.

 

...which is probably the way his trainer taught him to do it 90 days earlier...

 

Very interesting read... Good to have a wide variety of opinions and more importantly why they stand behind their opinions. I think I learned a few things from just reading this thread.

My company teaches us to drop the landing gear to one inch from the ground and use the air bags to lower and pull out. They said it helps to avoid the high hook situations. But, we run what I assume to be fairly similar spec'd out equipment, Truck, 5th Wheel, and Trailers, and run a lot of light loads so all that may play into the how and why they opt to teach it that way.

Again, thanks for the sharing of ideas and opinions... A valuable read for me at least.

 

That one was either dropped with the legs around 5 inches off the ground or on an uneven surface and moved. I would bet the latter. Don't take it personally.

 

I run my own trailer most of the time. But when I did a lot of drop and hook, I just stuck to the book method of backing under about half a 5th wheel and getting out to look. If the trailer lifted landing gear off the ground, I would crank down to touch then dump air and pull ahead and grease up 5th wheel. Back under and just before clicking in, air up and gently back in preserving all the fresh grease right where it needed to be.