Near jacknife in rain

That is your first jackknife and a testamony to why your automatic should have a manual mode to hold a gear through there. You probably would have been fine if that thing stayed in a gear to keep rpms at a calm 1250 or so. Kicking by downshifting to 1500+ spun your drives.

you did everything perfect in the time you had and no more than that. File that onto your heart against next time.

If you don't know how to get a manual mode to hold that transmission in gear find it asap. If you do not have one, get your company to software build one for you or issue you a truck that does have one.

Again you have officially had your first tractor jackknife. They usually occur violently FAST than trailer jackknifes. Because of your stupid automatic dumping all that RPM to the drives and breaking them loose.

 

I have had that happen on the 380 bridge in Cedar Rapids with the auto-shift Mack I used to drive. Maybe it’s all the crap in the air in that city, but that bridge gets pretty slick even when dry, if the temps and humidity are just so.

 

Oh good.

You are very lucky. If you went crazy horsed the wheel too much too hard or perhaps sat there with too much wasted time WTF in your head etc your trailer would have taken a straight line right off that roadway with you folded to one side for the ride. Your life was on the line. Forget the Boss.

You did everything right. We have had some jackknifes of both kinds before for specific reasons.

Now I want to try and give you something to defend against more of those jackknifes.

Remember that hill, rain etc and remember how she went into that slide on that spot. Next time YOU see something like that coming up and feel that she will down shift again, put her into manual until you get through it. Even if you lost a little speed.

IF you must downshift make sure you do it manually with no fuel at all under your foot. and the RPMs should continue to fall off until you are through that spot.

You will be fine. You just need to understand your actions with the wheel very lightly saved everything including yourself. You don't need much in the first 6 seconds or so when it starts to fold on you.

the best thing is not to be in one at all. Ha... until next time.

I'll look foward to the video but can imagine very easily how it went in your cab. Good luck to you.

 

I drive on so much snow and ice, i figured that if i was going to lose it someday it would be in a blizzard of all blizzards in the winter. But knock on wood, so far only ever hit deer in 2011. But the closest that I've come to wadding a truck into a ball of scrap metal was in the summer. Thinking back it was probably 1989 and about july or august, it had been hot and sunny for a while, and then we got a little rain. Well i was in a loaded fuel truck and dropped down a twisty hill into the Goat river, had driven the hwy before, never gave it much thought really. I was probably doing about 80 kms hr which is about 50 mph for the non metric people, when those big fat front tires of that peterbilt just started skidding instead of turning. I had about 19000 liters of gas on the trucks body mounted tank, and another 40,000 liters in the quad pup behind me. Well i was pretty sure that i was about to die, and as a last resort, i turned the other way a bit hoping to get the steering balloon tires back to getting a little traction at the same time i see the trailer is now sliding behind me, the hitch is going one way, and the trailer the other. At this point i feel i have nothing to loose, i can die at 80 kms hr for sure, or a snowball's chance in hell of saving it by speeding up, if wrong I'll just die going faster. Now with a little steering back, i hammer the loud pedal down, and with the steep down hill in seconds i was going way over the speed limit and trying to get around the next couple of sharp corners, and keep the trailer straight and preferably behind me. If any of you have driven that road you know the hill i mean. Sheer rock cliff up on my left, and sheer drop off hundreds of feet straight down on my right. I somehow, still not sure how, got to the bottom and hammered onto that little bridge now doing about 120 and foot to the floor. Pulling the equally as steep hill up the other side it was not long before i was down many gears and doing maybe 40 kms hr, and i could feel the drive tires fighting for traction
That was the day i really learned how much the oil comes out of asphalt in a hot spell, and a few drops of rain turns into the slippery crap from hell. It happens so fast, and when you least expect it. That day I made it into McBride and stopped for a big meal. I figured it was the least i owed my body was a good meal after the puckering experience it had. I looked my truck and trailer over top to bottom and not a scratch. Still to this day i remember that clearly. Not a clue how it didn't bounce off that rock bluff, or go over the cliff into the river. I have no advice for you man, but to say that it can happen anytime.

 

I'm getting ready to jackknife right now.

 

@Canadianhauler21 you did well.

Surprising how quickly things can happen, eh? Your immediate reaction was correct. I'm going to assume you weren't in cruise control and at the moment you began to yaw you also backed off on the throttle. Is that correct?

I will be looking forward to your video. This should be a good thread for newer drivers to help folks stay in control.

The only time I had a wake up yaw as you described was a few winter's ago, just west of Fort Worth. The ambient temperature was 27°F and it start to sprinkle a bit of rain. I was already easy on the throttle as I came up a rise to go over a bridge on a straightaway. As soon as I hit the bridge deck the truck yawed towards the left by about a foot. I backed off on the throttle all the way and it snapped back straight. This all happened in under a second, with my teammate sleeping soundly in the bunk.

I stopped at the next truck stop a few miles later as the light drizzle continued. I got an update on the weather. We had a load headed to Phoenix. The ice storm that was only 100 miles in diameter centered over Amarillo had grown into a monster 500 mile diameter storm centered over Abilene.

In my naivete I thought this light sprinkle of freezing rain should be to big deal. I engaged the power divider and continued westbound on I-20. It soon turned from freezing rain to snow, then an all out blizzard with lightning. Ever get that tunnel vision driving in a snowstorm with your headlights making a cone of snowflakes in front of you? Now bring on lightning flashes that cast snowflake shadows in unpredictable directions.

I made it through that night and cleared the storm at daybreak, pulling into a truck stop in Pecos to fuel and let my teammate take over for the day shift. As soon as I pulled in to fuel drivers that were standing in front of the store came over, eyes wide open, asking me "How bad is it easy of here?"

I didn't understand their concern until I looked back at my trailer. It was covered in at least two inches of ice, with icicles dripping down off the trailer skirt almost to the ground.

"Well, it isn't so bad if you engage the power divider and keep it steady".

I drove for Swift at that time. I would see if a few drivers may have been shamed into driving into that storm.

Coasting is your friend.

That's a mantra that was grilled into my skull decades ago, learning to drive in snow and ice near Seattle. Back OFF on the throttle to straighten it out. Applying throttle in a yaw is never correct IMHO.