Driving in mountains?

Basically, just pay attention and don't joyride down the grade. You might get comfortable in a couple months or so after hitting a few hills, but do not be fooled. Every downgrade you can't see the bottom of is serious business.

I mean yeah eventually you'll know what you're doing but never trust a company truck. I've only lost it thrice going downgrade, once on monteagle, once on cabbage and once somewhere I've never been again.

Cabbage was because i had less than a weeks experience and missed a downshift when i was already on the downgrade, similar story for the place i don't know where it was. Monteagle was cause by the jake failing but also because i was relying on the jake to keep the speed and i was in too high of a gear when it stopped working to safely descend.

Basically, just dont be an idiot, sometimes all the lanes are blocked when you come around a blind downgrade corner, goid luck stopping in time.

 

Stab Braking is where you lay on the brakes til they momentarily lock up then get off them and do it again and again til you are slowed enough.

Snub Braking is the 5 second deal just to shed some speed off, say you have your goal to go no more than 45 down the hill, you set your speed at 40 and let it creep up to 45 then snub brake 5 seconds to 40 and repeat as necessary.

What you found out was risky was trying to go down 45 in 9th and let it creep up to 50 then snub brake was just asking too much of the equipment and ended up smoking the brakes.

 

Why not have a brake heat gauge? Green your good, Red your not.

 

Once you have some experience, you should be able to tell if your brakes are hot just by the feel of the pedal.

 

Your nose is the heat gauge. Once you start smelling brake shoe.... thermal loading is gaining on you. Next you see a haze. Then proper blue smoke starts to roll. If you let get that far gone, you cannot stop for anything for a couple hours after the smoke quits to preserve your rig from fire.

I don't trust company equiptment any more than I have to. I did not spec and build the tractor trailer, I always assume it's a POS with the cheapest crap assembled on to it. If I had money to build me a proper truck able to take on all comers... companies would be out of business if I was one.

Ive been blessed with the occasional good truck. The FLD 120, Mack 500 Super and the Century (Despite it's autocrap rockwell failings in software...) was the three I was somewhat happy with. But the one I pick as the best was the one I personally bought with intent to become a O/O it had it all for the mid to early 90's Period. Just a 425 Kitty, not the monster 500 detroits or larger.

That is another thing about upgrade most you newbies don't understand. If you have horsepower, say 600 plus you can run up grade at the speed limit at cruise and still get your 6 miles to gallon average after conversion from Gallons per hour consumed.

Ive also been beaten over the head a couple times on mountain downgrade. Once I took a unlimited 100 plus mph no jake truck straight down Sideling, Savage, Monoleghia and several other passes prior to West Virginia. She started smoking at big sandy and did not quit until Jane Lew that day. All the way down drifting at a time killing 30 or so waiting for the #### thing to cool down while being teased and trash talked to on the radio. Fair enough.

That is my second commandement with mountain work, company equiptment is inadequate to the task and always will be. If I ever had a company anywhere on this earth that knows how to spec a truck and spend the money to do so, I would have found it by now.

One of the reasons I liked it so much was I spent quite a bit of time on the Bitterroot Mountain Range, nothing dramatic in terms of grades, but it's sheer nothing. No civilization etc. Nothing up there. Throw in a foot of split ice and snow that wont quit and you are trying to move along with a rockymountain double gas tanker doing the same thing with his second trailer getting swervy at times... You have to do it right until Sheridan or even the old Big Horn Battlefield.

 

By the time you smell, see or feel (brake fade) it's already a problem.

 

If you have a air application gauge you will know instantly you are adding more air to get the same stopping force. Eventually even that force goes bye bye. All the air in the world wont save you now.

 

Anything above 10 psi application and your going to build heat. Even when the maxis dynamite from low air (60 psi) if the pads are hot no stopping. Smoke a few grades and that will cure you. I know most drivers have had that feeling. It's not good . Lol.

 

Now you are referring to a scenario which I have not approached much, maxis dynamiting brakes that have failed, glazed, crystalized or burned off. If the brake pads and the metal that holds them cannot make adequate contact with those drums you are on a downhill ride approaching 140 plus. Absolute gravity quits pulling anywhere between that and 220 or so. Obviously unlucky Smoke Express Driver might not be among us anymore to talk about this.