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

The thing everyone is ignoring is that in a low traction situation it is pretty dangerous to be creeping down a pass riding your brakes. If you’re creeping along and your whole truck breaks loose it’s all over except for the crying.

Another thing ignored is that all snow and all ice isn’t the same. If you’re dropping off a pass and your tire tread is white from the snow or dull gray from the ice it’s a whole different world than if your tread is shiny black on either surface.

I suppose the no Jake’s ever is a good rule for people who aren’t experienced or don’t know any better. But personally I never wanted to try and hold 105k back on a pass at 10mph on snowpack. Even coming down Lolo or Lost Trail at 20-25 there were times I had to speed up to stay in front of the trailer if it started coming around or if it started pushing the back end of the truck out.

Back when Swift and Interstate Distributor was running 12 hot and heavy to and from Lewiston ID they’d have Lolo Pass a complete disaster. Coming down the hill there would be two shiny tracks glazed over from everyone dragging their brakes going down, meanwhile out of their slick tracks it was fine.

 

In other words they were going to fast for the conditions.

 

If you’re coming down on your jakes and you lose traction on that one axle, you have four more axles to work with to correct the problem.

If you come down on your brakes and lose traction, the only thing left is the power of prayer.

 

Nope, too slow and glazing the road up all the way down because they were constantly on the verge of the whole works breaking loose. Back then Swift would be right at 80k with grain going to Lewiston and those guys would be scared to death dropping off Lolo. So they’d creep and probably had no idea how close they were to a big mess because they didn’t pay attention to the tracks they were leaving.

 

Even experienced drivers can sh** their pants on what looks like dry roads.

Black ice happens. And it don't matter how slow and careful you are.

Driving during daylight when you can see, you have a chance.

It's a whole different game in the dark.

 

That’s why it’s important to pay attention to the outside temp. Black ice doesn’t just happen out of nowhere.

 

You do realize that those of us disagreeing with you are mostly guys who learned how to do this when the only electronics on the truck were in the CB & AM/FM radios? Many of us learned the mountains with no Jakes.

Exactly. It's an early warning system that let you know you've misjudged traction levels. So you slow it down a bit so the required retardation HP is lower.

 

This just popped up on Fakebook this morning:

 

The idea behind not using jake in rain, ice/snow is that even though it may have 3 levels of operation, it activates in an all or nothing fashion. Think if your brakes didn't a pedal but just a on/off switch. When you pressed the on switch the brakes came fully on, like a panic stop. You lose the ability to apply a tiny amount of braking. The key to keeping control on slippery surfaces is to be gentle in every way, like wearing tennis shoes and walking across a hockey rink, you wouldn't attempt to cut back like a football running-back. You would walk slow and deliberately and only slowly and carefully move.

 

Except it’s not all or nothing, that’s what the switch is for. Running an engine brake on the first stage (2 cylinders on old engines, 3 cylinders on most new ones) isn’t going to be enough to lock anything up unless you’re bobtail.

If there was ice or snowpack and the temp was above 20 degrees I’d drop off a pass at 104-105k a gear lower than I normally would and run the engine brake alternating between the first and second stages to keep my rpm’s where they needed to be. Colder than 20 degrees and it was just business as usual, same gear and speed and third stage on the the engine brake just like if the road was dry.