Driving to Alaska

The cold isn't all there is to be concerned about. North Dakota is nothing compared to the Alcan.

 

Read the first two pages of this thread again. The op was given plenty of good advice of what he was about to undertake. It was a very interesting thread from the beginning even for a company driver like myself. It was a sad ending if he did freeze up.

 

Having a truck freeze up can happen to anybody up there. My newly rebuilt air dryer failed on me and left me on the side of the road just North of Teslin, YT this winter. It sure sucks to have to lay under your truck in negative 25 at night to pull an air dryer out and bypass it. I had to come up with a manual governor since my governor is part of the air dryer assembly. The hand valve for my train whistle came in handy for that. You can dump a lot of air quickly through a 1/2" air line.
Being prepared with lots of tools and spares do make a trip up North a lot easier. Even if you can just limp to the next town or shop will save you thousands avoiding that hook.

 

Thanks for the update, man. Many of us warned him. Green and Frozen. Sounds like the title to a NEW movie~!! Yep, that was him, methinks. Sheesh.

 

The bloodied noob finally came back...
1. I pounded the fifth of whiskey
2. I made love to that polar bear,
3. Now where's that Eskimo woman you want me to shoot.....

 

Either that or he STAYED there and shared the whiskey with the Polar Bear while the woman had to hunt, shop, clean, and cook. . . . . hard telling.

 

Anyone...

How is it a wrecker is able to go out, pick this rig up and bring it back without having the same problem?

 

Well, maybe it was possible to tow it after the sun came up and it " warmed up some" as opposed to 02:00 am.

I wonder how they got the load to the customer, or did they? Also, is the tractor trailer sitting in the old man's wrecker yard right now...

 

Pretty simple actually. A wrecker kept in a heated garage, maintained diligently, and designed for those climates vs a truck from the lower 48 that was not prepared for that environment.

 

Then I want one, should be a standard

 

Cold weather affects all vehicles. Im not current on vehicle specs for heavy class 8 vehicles, but have the sense to consider our lower 48 tractors to be somewhat lightweight when not heavy enough and equippted enough for the brutal alaskan winters.

Note the wrecker man said he wanted the sun to come up and warm things a little bit, so he is probably at the edge or below the operating envelope for such vehicles like his wrecker. Hydralic fluid, cable strengths etc. that sort of thing. Even air systems if any. It's brutal. The coldest Ive been is close to -55 when allowing for the wind wheras it was -50 that morning around 3 am trying to finish hot fueling of our tractor. It took an hour with the engine running at max idle I think 1400. And I had to go inside every 20 minutes to warm up while the spouse stayed inside the tractor which was at max heat inside and only around 68 or so inside. The winds had warped the drivers door when you consider the difference between outside and inside temp. It left a inch leak so to speak.

Wreckers are very strong machines, the best horse engines and the most torque to incredibly powerful numbers with custom tuning etc. But when wrecker man who is probably local to that part of alaska says he wants to wait until warm up... then it's cold.

My own experiences are mine. Others have had similar or different experiences with cold and may have stronger or different opionions to me. The cold was not really a problem for me in those days where I was eating large amounts of food and burning it off as heat. I was a pretty strong metabolism in those days. Not so much now. Im not sure if I wanted to live in a place that cold in my later years.

The other part of being cold was more common to the midatlantic states where we had a 87 COE that had air start. And a engine block warmer. We endured a ice storm one weekend creating a inch of ice on everything and the ground. It was flatbedding so the load was iced too. (Ugh... the sun came up during the day to thaw everything before you got up there to unload.)

Anyway, that big cam struggled to fire on the air start and we glad handed the air start system to another tractor set at 1500 rpm to feed off it and continue cranking. It just wont do it. They finally dragged the whole thing dead, breaks locked on that ice, all wheels not moving 80,000 pounds around the lot to the shop. damnedest thing I ever saw. I would not have believed a bobtail could physically pull a dead weight all the way around like that on ice. We had some people who knew how to get something out of tractors in that company. My hats to them. We aimed a propane cannon at my tractor for several hours in the shop bay and I think they finally got it going. But it was only about -28 that morning. -40 with winds which had been blowing a noreaster that weekend. (Nor'Easter is a winter tropical storm for lack of a better describing. It is not true tropical but does gather heat enough to fire against the cold front coming in from NW.

I finally hit my cold up on the 287 raton road one day, it wasnt much only -20 and ice on everything. It would not quit and that truck finally did want to quit so I picked a field and aimed the trailer into the wind and waited in the sleeper with that engine going until the sun came up and we were able to get out of there. It delayed the load to dallas from Denver a few hours but they didnt care. that appointment was that appointment. What I did was wrong or right, I don't know. All I knew was that tractor was also getting cold enough to droop the gauges on all of the oil inside of it and it did not want to heat the coolant very well and finally just would not really produce power with that wind. It is what it is.

I have stories and more where that came from. These were just about the cold. Not the violence possible in a storm situation which are other stories.