Make sure your tandems are LOCKED!!!

You can also get a ticket by DOT for not having your tandem pins engaged...

 

Oops...Wrong thread

 

early in my (so far 23 yr) career I needed to adjust my tandem position and someone volunteered to help me. We got it done and I took off. Later that day I applied the brakes a little hard to try and stop at a restaurant to use a badly needed restroom. I felt something... thought it was a really bad pothole and I saw some piece of bounce off to the side of the road. I even walked back down the road a little ways to see this massive pothole, but couldn't find it.

Oh well, took care of biological needs and proceeded to next delivery stop. While trying to back in this (tight) place I noticed (finally) that my tandems were ALL THE WAY TO BACK OF TRAILER! The guy that helped me apparently had not confirmed the locking of pins after adjustment. They slid to back shearing off an end of the adjustment helper bar on the way there. Maybe that slowed them down enough not to go all the way off the trailer. I was REALLY lucky!

To this day, if I slide my tandems and someone helps me, I GOAL! (get out and look)

 

i do this on EVERY HOOK up, It's really hard trying to crank up a 45,000lb load off ur tires

 

how would not locking tandem pins put your trailer on your tires?

 

Heh, learned the hard way about a week ago to check those. Picked up a loaded trailer in NJ going to CA. We checked the tires, lights, but did not check to see if the tandems were locked in. Just got on the interstate in heavy stop and go traffic, and the tandems slid all the way back while starting to move in low gear. We thought someone had run into the trailer. No damage, and we pulled into a rest stop and reset the tandems to CA legal. But now I will always check. We were lucky. Light load, only 5000 lbs, 12 pallets of designer clothes.

 

We had a guy rip the tandems off running into the end of a K rail. Definitely possible.