Lesson of the day… Always check your fifth wheel and Kingpin to ensure it’s secure and locked

This begins at the leave two inchs between leg shoes and ground bs. Drivers are not taught that every truck and trailer sits at a different height and to check for that. They are just taught in their checklist to drop air bags and back in and the trailer will lift up. Wrong in so many cases. Dropping air bags isn’t always necessary. And the landing gear have a crank on them with two speeds for other reasons then just raising them up after hooking. This practice is hard on fifth wheels and king pins, scrapes all the grease off making it useless, and not to mention it pushes up/bends the heck out of the nose and bolster plates on trailers and is tough on drivelines.

 

Yeah, dropping air bags, what a luxury. Before air ride, tall 5th wheels, big rubber, all insured trailers were never dropped at the same height. One ALWAYS stopped before backing under, and yes sir, 75 cranks down with a loaded trailer in low gear will get you a sweatin'. Too low, forget it, just mash the sucker. Trailer gearbox messed up, and many were, you had better have some wood to back over, because you could never turn the handle loaded in high or low gear. Air ride drop,,pfft,,