I finally remembered to ask this question about trucks or trailers that lift their axles

One more thing that will break, and always need maintenance.

 

They have drop axles on class b dumps that turn when you turn the wheel now too. No more destroyed tires from negligent drivers.

 

That happened to me once when I was driving a concrete mixer. I forgot to raise the push tires when I got to the job site. When I was backing up, it blew one of the push tire air bags out. It happened in front of an elementary school when everyone was there to pick up their kids. It sounded like a shotgun going off. Scared the hell out of everyone.

 

That would have been some good YouTube material right there!

 

Thats what we told management. But since they are college educated and we aren't.........

 

Do you go to Canada at all? You can’t have manually operated lift axles up there.

 

That happened in 1995, before YouTube.

 

What's the question?

 

In my opinion that was worth the expense

 

When I pulled food grade out of a Northwest, our Volvo's were set up to have automatic lift axles. You can control them manually with a button in the cab, but they would automatically go down when you were loaded. If you're driving a single screw tractor, it's useful because you can increase downward pressure on your drive axle for when the road is slippery. Makes it easy getting under a trailer on a dirt lot too. You get almost 3 miles a gallon better lifting one or two axles when you're empty, so that was the primary motivation for it though