Driving an automatic on icy roads and taking off on hills?

Do trucks have true 4 wheels these days.

The truck I'm in now has it and it's the first for me.

 

Winter driving 101 is to always do your braking in a straight line.. I like to use a combination of Jake's and service brake, and they both get turned off when entering a corner.

 

preach brother

 

You can ride the brakes 9-10 miles easy without any problem. You will be going very slow. Probably 10-15 mph without the help of engine brake.

You should be putting the chains on. If the road is still dry at chain up area then you can wait till you get to snow covered roads. I guess you have to stop in road that not good idea or put chain on before and run them on dry roads, not good for the chains if you want them to last.

If you’re doing this every year have you looked into automatic chains. They would solve the problem of no place to chain up and not running chain on dry roads. I have not looked into automatic tire chain to much but I don’t think their is number of axle limit. You should be able to stop your truck going downhill if needed. You don’t want to use trailer brakes because apparently you don’t have enough traction to keep control of the trailer. You should at least put some chains on the trailer. Then you could use you brakes vs the engine brake

 

Right you pull the trailer around corners. If you going downhill a 8 miles hill you don’t take your foot off the brakes on the bend in the road.

 

Again, you’d choose to block a travel lane on a two lane highway to put chains on? You’re talking out of school and it shows you’re not at all familiar with the roads others and I are talking about. You’ve not ridden the brakes down a hill holding back 105k. You’ve not tried riding the brakes going into a downhill 180 degree switchback that is banked. You’re repeating what you were told in a manual and refusing to hear anything that people with real world experience have to say.

Auto chains aren’t a viable option because the chains would only be under the inside 4 tires and are useless at that point. You’d still have to stop and put singles on the outside tires even with auto chains. One set of three railers do way more good than chaining up 4 single tires. If you spin at all you’re done once the not chained tires hit the snow pack. You need three railers to be able to dig down and keep going.

As far as your reply to @D.Tibbitt about not letting off in a corner that will be precisely what sticks you into the snow bank. You’ll be going slow already and once you’re into the banked curve your trailer will already be wanting to slide and you’ll be on the brakes and you will lose traction. Versus carrying more speed and using the engine brake to slow you down again once you exit the curve.

 

Here you go. Stopped down toward the bottom of Lost Trail to take a leak this day. Notice how the trailer is loaded to max out the weight on the tractor. Notice how I have an axle in the air coming down the hill. Notice how there are no chains on the drives. It can be done if people are smart about it.

Also on this day there was zero snow coming down on the Montana side until about 3/4 of a mile from the top.




Anyway, you keep doing things your way. Nobody is going to care. But it doesn’t look well when you keep having solutions for problems that don’t exist for the people that do it every day.

And about the brakes on the pup, that was because of the inner bridge on the 4-6 axle group. The back axle of the pup had more weight on it than the turntable. Instead of needlessly throwing 3 chains on the trailers it was easier and just as safe to close a valve for a few miles. Usually guys would do it leaving the yard and then stop a couple hours down the road and open it back up once they were over the hill.

 

Also “just chain up on bare pavement” isn’t always an option in the real world. And if we did tear up a chain hopefully we could patch it together enough to use the rest of the week until we got back. We didn’t run cheap truckstop chains that come in a bag.

 

If chains are needed I would not stop block lane I would probably chain up in chain area and will have drive on dry roads. You don’t want to drive very far but if that you only option that what you do.

you can ride the brakes all day at 80k because you are not making more heat then the drums can dissipate. At 105k you have 2 or 3 more axle if they all have brakes you should be able to to do the same thing.


Do you understand the original question is a driver driving a regular truck at 80k on regular mountain passes. He doesn’t have lift axles putting 38-40 on drive axles. They have chain up locations. Do you recommend that driver run engine brake

 

At this point your refusal to listen to those who have the experience on these roads has passed merely annoying. On Lost Trail, there is one “chain area” on the very bottom of the hill. It fits two trucks. Maybe. Then, nothing until you get to the top. There’s no cell service, so unless someone is coming down and has the CB on, you will not know what the conditions are halfway up, or on the other side. If you do get cell service, you’re lucky if road conditions are updated every six hours. I’ve come up the hill starting at 50 degree weather that turned into a decent bit of snow on top. You just won’t know.

All that said, our company used to run over Lost Trail every Friday for about ten years. I can’t remember more than once that the driver chained up. It’s almost always cold enough to have good traction — if you have decent tires, and keep your wits about you. Nobody I know EVER came down on their service brakes.