Dropping a Trailer Properly

Yes I jumped the pin once in school, instructor says you didn't follow procedure of getting out and looking first did you? Their procedure included backing under the trailer yay far then setting your brakes hopping out to look and hook up your air and electric lines, really just a good habit forming thing to prevent skipping the 5th wheel under the kingpin.

Out here in the real world you can feel when the tractor is sort of lifting the trailer just a bit and things are OK to proceed without getting out and looking. It's when the previous driver cranks the landing gear way way down where the problems come in for the next driver.

Yard Dog don't care he takes the trailers where they need to be boom his job is done. Driver comes to pick up loaded trailer and spends very valuable time trying to fix what an inconsiderate driver before has done with the landing gear.

 

If you do not have an air dump just crank the landing gear down to just off the ground, then pull out slow.
This is not something you are doing to help yourself. This is something you are doing to help the next driver hooking the trailer.
Allot of the time, especially if the ground is not exactly flat, I will lower the gear till it is just touching the ground. This is still not bad. It will not cause anyone any real issues.
The people that do as you described in that first post, and crank the gear down more after it is on the ground, cause all kinds of 4 letter words to be used.
Do that with an empty, and the guy that hooks it loaded later will want to kill you and all your offspring if he could find you.
It takes forever to crank down. And cranking landing gear down with allot of weight on it is not good for it.That crank system was designed to hold up the trailer. Not to be used raising/ lowering the height of a heavy loaded trailer.

Honestly when I saw your first post I thought you must be joking. I still hope you were.

 

This is the issue right here. Sure the next driver can back under easy. Great! Now he or she has to work really hard to crank the heavy loaded trailer down to til some of the weight is resting on the tractor. If it's 108 degrees outside or pouring down rain or freezing cold or if they have 377 miles to go and only 8.5 hours left on their 70, yes (s)he's going to be cursing the driver who cranked it down too far such as you have explained.

 

Leaving your air bags dumped can cause major damage to your drive line.
With it dumped your drive shaft angle changes. Many times you will hear the thing complaining when you try to move far. It will vibrate as well.

 

what are those orange trucks limited to in speed? i know crst is 64 or 67. im trying to get a list of all the companies and what they are limited to so i know what ones i can pass easily and what ones i cant so im not trying to pass a guy that is the same speed as me and holding up traffic.

 

man now im going to confuse the snot out of some of you.

I had 2 dump valves on my trailer, 1 for each axle, anyone have a guess why?

 

To spare their feelings, like kids who are too young to understand why one is getting a birthday present and the other isn't, so they both get something until they're older?

I've heard of guys babying their trucks, but that a new high water mark, I think.

 

Back axle helps for turning and backing. Keeps the wheels from dragging sideways so bad.
I have had one with a dump on the rear and a lift on the front. Was rather nice when I went on toll roads light.
Having the 2 would help allot when backing though. I am not sure if that was the reason. But you could get a fast turn with the rear lifted and a nice slow turn with no swing area when backing with the front up.
I will have to look at the pic's of your trailer and maybe I will be able to guess why. I will edit if I see anything that stands out.

Nope. Still cannot see any reason for 2 dumps.
As stated, it would help to maneuver the trailer allot, without dragging tires when turning, and to make more precise turns forward and back.
But other than that I do not know.

Now if it is not the step in you pic's. I can think of reasons for other types of trailers. Especially if it is one that you keep dumped unless dropping and that is your dropping method. On a trailer without landing gear.
Too many trailer types to guess though.

 

Wow! At some point Prime started out as truck drivers themselves. Obviously they have progressed way beyond that. For the worse. Bet there isn't a truck driver amongst the BOD.

 

That is pretty close to it, I just had dump valves on a 10'6" spread, if you dumped the air in one axle the trailer would pivot on the other. This was extremly helpuful im places like the flying J in Tacoma where the spots are really tight and hard to get into.

You can literally use the dump valves to walk the trailer sideways to make it go into a parking space, sure beats having a close call with some ones hood.

As well in the winter time if you are going up a hill and start to lose traction and you are loaded, you can dump the air out of the front axle and it will transfer a lot of that weight up to the drives and help you pick up some traction when you really need it.