Power steering out, hats off to the old schoolers

I wasn't arguing that fact...just adding to it. Vehicles today allow drivers to maintain a lot of bad habits they wouldn't have been able to have picked up in the trucks of yesteryear. Heck, how many today ever even look at their brakes, let alone know how to properly adjust 'em. I was watching Ice Road Truckers the other night and had to chuckle a little when Lisa snugged up a slack adjuster trying to adjust a brake on the trailer....and then couldn't back it off. If you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be doing it....and trucks these days make it easy for companies to put clueless butts behind the wheel...with limited skill or knowledge required.

 

I had an alabama DOT almost show me how to adjust my brakes once! Until he realized i didn't have my trailer brakes set!

They dont really need good brakes on an ice road though...they have as much braking power by dragging a brick on a rope behind the truck as they do with properly adjusted brakes...since theyre on ice and all...

 

Ice around here is slicker 'n snot. Coldest it gets in the winter time is in the upper 20's usually...with maybe one or two nights in the single digits every winter. When you are walking on the ice around here, the heat from your shoe melts a thin layer of the ice at the surface, so that there is a lubricating layer of water between your shoe and the ice....and THAT'S what makes it slick.

Up where they are, it is cold enough (day time highs in the minus 40's), that the thin layer of ice at the surface doesn't melt as much, so the ice is not nearly as slick...and they get more traction than you'd think as a result. Yeah, they still break traction...but it ain't like on the ice around here.

 

I hear ya. Back in the horse & buggy days, truck brakes had no slack adjusters. We'd adjust the brakes ourselves on an as needed basis and it was really quick and easy to do.

Park the truck on the fuel island with the brakes released, tyranny in neutral and wheels blocked.
Screw the brake shoes tight up against the drum and than back it off a little. Go to the next one. Less than five minutes for the whole truck. Three or four times a week was enough. We ran local so it was lot of stop and go.