Pneumatic trailer weight shift/cement powder

It may not be possible to move the 5th wheel up enough even if there are notches available to do so, it will depend in part on your trailer configuration. I've never been able to get more than about 10,500 on my steers even with an adjustable 5th wheel because if I move it up to far the frame of the tractor will rip off the bottom pipe during a turn as it runs down in front of the 1st hopper.

 

It’ll eventually settle in for the ride. You’ll get used to how it behaves, with some time. Like any load, just be easy with how you drive and things will be good. You should be taking it easy, with how high the center of gravity is, anyway.

You’re doing it right, by taking the time to properly set up the truck. However, before hooking the trailer and leaving the yard, I’d spray the 5th wheel’s slider mechanism and tracks with some type of penetrating lubricant. With full air pressure, release the slider mechanism and make sure it’s not froze up with rust and corrosion. Then, you’ll need to put a pry bar to the 5th wheel and make sure it slides. While doing all this, I’d go ahead and use your pry bar to move the 5th wheel forward two notches, since you already know you need to move 1,000lbs forward. Then, when you release the mechanism, take a hammer and smack the locking pins, to make sure they’re fully seated. The last thing you need or want is for the 5th wheel to inadvertently slide on you. This should get you squared away. So long as you evenly load the trailer, which you’ll get used to, you should not have any future issues.

 

Kinda late to the party here, but all of the pneumatic trailers that I hauled cement in, you could also move the kingpin plate on the trailer by unbolting it and moving it forward or backwards. I usually always stayed hooked to the same trailer, but over the years have pulled a few different ones when trailer I had was in shop. The main ones I pulled over the years, one had the front of the plate at the very front of the kingpin plate mounting bracket, then one of the others it was 4 bolt holes back on the mounting bracket. I don't remember the amount of holes on the angle bracket that it could move, but I think it was bolted by maybe 8 bolts per side and had around 15 holes per side on trailer frame that could move the plate to, so had some room to work with, and once it was set close to where it was needed, it was never moved. I have hauled a lot of cement, and always loaded through center hatch, and was always right around 79,500 when loaded, and would always be fairly close on weight on drives and trailer every time. Yes it would move a little bit right after loading, but after a few miles going down road it'll pack in and not move, especially if it's a bumpy road!

 

Did you get your 5th wheel moved and your weight distribution sorted?

 

Not sure what you mean by if it was raining, but we would cross scales once in a while in my area, just depending on where had to deliver and never had issues with weight. We always loaded over 79,000, unless a customer requested light loads be brought, but that was still usually at least 25 tons. Or if we couldn't load max weight because there was a few types of cement we hauled that would fill 1000 cubic foot trailer before would get to 25 tons. We had good lightweights of between 24,000-26,000, so could haul around 27 tons or little more at a time. One other thing I failed to mention was we had fixed 5th wheels, so we were unable to slide them anyways if something was off. I believe the only time I seen someone load cement in a hole that wasn't the center one around here, was they had to load in the front hole because they couldn't keep steer axle on scale to load out of the center hole with extended frame on truck.