Lightweight trucks

Go ahead and ask, prime guys will help along the way.

 

When are you gonna pick a company? Or are you just doing research?

 

@Chinatown. Same drill china....

 

Lightweight trucks is a misnomer in reefer work. When you get two people inside a cab and then supply them with food, cases of water and a variety of other support things you are already adding about a thousand pounds plus to the tare.

Which means if they insist on loading you to 80K in the box, you wisely left off half tanks or more of fuel so that you will be at 80K or less weight when you do hit a scales known to be really picky picky picky. Personally I try to hit the pre-weight with as little fuel as possible so that it wont kick me off for the more precise weighing platform. That causes unnecessary delays and additional problems.

 

What questions do you have?

 

This video shows a new Lightweight before a driver gets assigned to it


This video is from 2012 but gives you an idea of what a driver can fit inside a Lightweight

 

They keep hanging airtanks too #### low on skinny brackets. That's a flaw in a number of reasons.

Lightweight does not compute with me. If you willing to accept a tractor that will do only 60K gross weight combination rating, then why are you even in trucking? If you are going to do trucking, you need the strongest vehicle possible so that when you are handed that 81K freight you can run it with half tanks fuel and not worry something breaking back there.

"Pretty much all trucks are automatic these days" I call BS. ANY Trucker who VALUES him or herself WILL learn and excel with a manual transmission, the more gears and options away from the overabused and tired 10 speed company crap the better. Even if it was just a simpler and useful 13 speed double over or double under. (I prefer personally the double under, more useful than the double over which will be up against it's company governor setting and thus no good. It has no value when your rig falls heavily onto it's unconsious face at 60 mph in a Kansas headwind.

If you notice the red rubber covering of the positive jump stud and the black negative jump stud... please, don't bother having them on. If you have such crappy OEM batteries that you need to feed them for several days and nights after a sit in the yard a week or two, then you will never be happy. IF your APU power motor on the right hand side of the frame is any good at all, it will have the ability to provide enough current to not only jump start a reefer trailer, jump start it's host tractor or a different truck or car all together. In fact, a REALLY GOOD APU unit will have the ability to provide 12,500 kilowatt of 120 volt power across at least 8 120 volt outlets and at least one 220 volt outlet. with certain restrictions on both. You can and should be able to run your personal home off it when necessary provided your main power grid went down to hurricane or something else.

I believe very strongly in overengineering everything that goes onto a 18 wheeler so that it will be a good girl and help you quite a bit in many situations in which you might find yourself. I do not do well with super single tires quite frankly and prefer Duals on Aluminum wheels. Good quality tires with the deepest tread possible and availible will pay for themselves at least once by extradicting your rig out of a off road situation or a ice problem at least once when it really has to in it's life time when expressed in either a March 1 to October 15h working year prior to a complete and new retail set installed just before first snow or better yet first frost/ice. I don't even look at the cost of 10 tires. I have them put on. The best I can find and have the tire boy install in my broken and badly butchered spanish. (That will be a topic in thickskin someday when I get a good rant worked up enough...)

What you need to do is three things., Also if you intend to keep those things then zip tie the rubber caps on as a fail safe measure, what happens sometimes is you get cold enough it will viberate them right off the metal pegs which contracted in the chill. Then during a winter storm on ice etc thrown up both by the wheels and also by the weather will bridge the space between both pegs, worse case scenario it becomes a parasite which drains power with you none the wiser until below 11.5 volts. Or 9.5 whichever alarm you set it at.

If you are going to jump a dead truck, do it at the starter motor with the rig in nuetral and chocked to the nines and trailer brake set. She will turn over fast enough. Finally but not least Your catwalk up there is simply put... inadequate. Your driver is going to slip on those curved frame rails at some point tomorrow. If you are going to put a catwalk on there by gawd, put a nice thick wide steel grate on there. This light weight concept taken to extreme is getting to be a big pile of BS to extreme and begin to smell of same.

1- Purchase quality OEM Batteries of the biggest rating you can get and spend the dollar for the extra protections such as the old 3-1 kit. Meaning that if there is 4 batteries in box, computer runs code tracking three of them until they find the bottom three worst drained batteries and isolate the best one and call that one the 4th protected battery. So that when you the driver comes along you have a fighting chance to start without too much thinking. (Yet...)

2- Im pretty sure Professionally Trained and more valubaly experienced truckers will know enough to discard that awful eyeburning bright orange seatbelt way over there on the pax side. Don't you know that when you bring in something small and orange in color it becomes surrounded by very large Schnider tractor trailers displaying maternal instinct? ///teasing.

The more the makers of vehicle interiors insist on plastering the already visually unappealing interior with orange, yellows, reds and so on of stickered alert and warning messages in three languages (*that one could be french for the Crown's DOT people not to bump their heads on the shorter doors issued to lightweight trucks... in french no less... //teasing... ..sarcasm...) the more I push back and advocate a custom interior. Has people died off and forgotten to pass on the old Diamond weave or perhaps different kinds of proven materials and luxury appointing and sewing of interiors back in the day, really good interiors not only looked good to you, but provided you with some plush until you were able to accumulate about a decade's worth of overeating and provide your own plush padding. he he he...

The sleeper dates me back about 30 years plus and considered a premium space then. To be honest this whole light weight tractor deal is difficult for me to accept. There usually is a huge bunk box below that makes up the main cab floor that is generally one peiece with the two side boxes as expected. Expecting two drivers to live in that space will work a while. Cellies get more room and luxury compared to this one... //snarky. Notice the continious stream of notification of wanted for this person, that person, some other person and so on. Never stopping. Implies a rather difficult area to be in and you might be swept up by the Law to that which they think is minor and routine but for you trying to get moving and making a living, it's going to get very interesting rather fast when your freedom depends on your being able to post bail and get out.