Driving in the rain tips?

Never drive faster than you are comfortable. If in doubt about faster or slower, pick slower. The time you lose being slow for a few miles is nothing compared to time spent cleaning up a wreck.
NEVER DRIVE IN THE RAIN WITH FLASHERS ON. it hides/confuses your brake lights & turn signals. It doesn't warn anyone. It tells others you are poorly trained. Any trainer teaching this is about 5 months more experienced than his student.

 

Governed at 63, there’s a company that has no regard for their drivers’ time or safety. Just inviting everyone to tailgate you being that much slower than almost all other vehicles...

 

When you come up on a set of turnpike doubles talk to him in the rain, especially in the NY State Thruway. You will have TWO 48' trailers if not two 53's in tow by now. Cars from out of state near say Erie, Albany, NYC, Mass etc where the major roads connect tot he thruway are the most dangerous because they might be first time visitors onto the thruway in the rain. Boom two trailers OMFG and then they start swerving in that body language which will cause trouble if you are near a set of doubles. (They are used to it.) Why? because that second trailer is theoretical in the rain. You can only hope it follows you because you cannot see it.

One clue as to going way too fast in the rain.

Eyeball your front lower corner in the mirrior of your trailer particular care attention to the vertical corner of your trailer in line with your sleeper corner. If both agree, you are great. IF your front corner on the outside of the curve you are on begin to LEAN OUTWARDS of your sleeper vertical corner with your cab's back wall and THEN LEANS FORWARD against your first drive tires (Looks like it's getting LOWER above your tires) you are going way too fast on that curve.

Those mirrors tell you a story of how your truck is doing in so many ways. If you can back it down to where the trailer is not leaning off your 5th wheel so much in the rain you are doing really good.

Tip number three.

Your RPM gauge. If she starts dancing say 1700 solid at 70 and suddenly starts dancing between about 1850-1450 and back to 1700 in floating along with your suspension gauge beginning to jump about say 45 to 55 back and forth around 50 PSI loaded on your drives.... your drives are spinning in the water. Take that cruise off stupid before she starts to slide on you. You can verify this by apply 5 pounds air braking for a moment. 5 little bitty pounds. barely touching. If she noses down a little bit on you (Your chin leaning forward a moment) and your drives settle to 1700 solid you know that you have been spinning in the rain a little bit.

This happens more often on blacktop where it's grooved badly. You wont notice it much but if you have a good truck with many gauges you can see a little bit where she is whispering to you. HEY IM LOOSE fix it.

 

Don’t drive out of your comfort zone.
I can do 75+ through any amounts of buckets pouring or snowing wind etc
Comes with experience.
But I grew up and slowed down for the sake of my life and others around me who might be like you make a quick mistake end up jackknifed and me running into them.

So now days increas your following distance
Keep your foot off of the brake you really don’t need to even touch it if you have a good distance
Especially if light and with the trailer abs one corner too fast and you’ll be in a ditch.

 

The more you’re using your foot brake, the more you know you’re going too fast or following too close or both.

 

I can not read or say that enough!

 

There is no excuse to slow down under 55 on any part of 94 unless it is snowing and you have a foot of it on the ground.

Slowing down to 45 (the minimal speed is 55), is dangerous.

 

He's going into or coming from Ontario, so his company like all companies have to have a speed limiter set.

But 45 mph must be an exaggeration , there's nowhere along there you'dneed slow down that much for even if it's new to you.

I wonder if you're scared of losing traction ( you wont,, but only time will teach you that) or if your problem is related to visibility? Clean your windows and fit high quality wiper blades is a good start. If every other truck seems to be outdistancing you, its an issue with you but if it's just the odd few, that'll be the usual Michigan supertruckers.

Like they said, don't go faster than you feel safe, ever, but you need to build confidence fairly smartly I'd say.

 

don't worry about what some other truck is driving at. go much slower on curves and keep good stopping distance in front of you. If you go slow in a curve, all but what , 2 minutes and your running safe again, but run to fast dump the load, deal with police, company, insurance, looking for another job, not finding loads due to past problems. take it easy in curves and go on your way, as safe as possible. good luck

 

There you go, very well put. All new and veteran truck drivers, copy and print this, post it on your dashboard. doesn't get any better right there. some can even add more to it, but this is perfect advice. thanks