Slick roads 101

I'll take dry snow pack over salt water any day of the week! The color of pavement makes a difference, too. Hadn't been out that way in a while, but used to be Wyoming's pavement was very light compared to the blacktop Utah had laid down Echo Canyon.

And nowadays, with the increase volume of traffic and stupid trucker tricks, Wyoming has their roads closed before it gets very bad. We used to go all the way across in conditions much worse than those they close things down for now. Biggest hazard back in the day was the dang single drive wiggle wagons who'd refuse to chain up until they spun out halfway up the hill. That was a major issue on 40, too, especially @ Cline's Corner WB & Ashfork EB.

 

I'm glad you mentioned that. Different types of rock, concrete, or asphalt have different thermal properties. Some may be much colder than ambient temperature, and "colder" rock will freeze earlier than "warmer" rock. Some are more porous, which can retain moisture and create an icier surface when it freezes. Pay close attention when the surface of the road changes, you can go from bare and dry to slick spots in a hurry.

 

The horrible thing about ice is you often can't tell how bad it is until things start to slip or you see the first rig slid of the road.
Some times I will try to gauge slickness by testing how much throttle it takes to spin out my drives. Of course this depends somewhat on how heavy the trailer is but I find it helpful. I'll generally drive one gear below the highest gear that will spin out.

Or else (only at low speeds here and where the road is straight and traffic clear) test how much brake will start a skid. Sometimes, when I think it is slick, there is actually good traction and vice-versa.

Some one has got to invent a "traction meter". Wouldn't that invention lower our blood-pressure?

 

My sphincter has been an excellent traction meter.

By the way, I also use your tests to gauge how slick a road is: light braking or a LITTLE extra throttle to see if it is starting to lose traction a tad. Then I'll "featherfoot" the throttle to stay inside the edge of that envelope and downshift to higher rpm's if I get too low and need to feather off speed.

There's nothing like practicing floating gears on a slick surface to get real good at matching rpm's. The last thing you want to be doing is putting any herky jerky through the power train on your shifts. I've gotten to really start to look forward to running in slick conditions because of the concentration and challenge it presents.

 

I don't even have my CDL yet and I think this is one of the best threads I've read here.

 

I'm going to a bit further with your excellent point about 'feeling' what's going on.

Many of you without a lot of time on slick roads will have a harder time getting to the point where you can drive on feel. But it's very much a sign that you've really become a driver, or as the cliched phrase goes, you've become one with the machine.

This in no way means you're disregarding what things look like, what it means is the visual inputs are merely confirmations of what you have already felt and reacted to. Your brain has already processed, and your muscle memory reacted, to what a quick glance confirms is actually happening. If you have to interpret what you see before you react, you're 'behind' the truck, and you end up chasing it, your reactions always a tic too late. It also leads to information overload, and the loss of situational awareness that comes with that overload. If you have to 'see' to know what's happening, you're adding another step, and when you plug those extra steps in a feedback loop, things get out control in a hurry. Rather than 'Feel, react, feel reaction, adjust, visually confirm' it becomes 'See, analyze, react, see reaction, analyze reaction, adjust input, see reaction, analyse...'

I'm struggling a bit to find the proper phrasing, let's try this way: When you can react by feel, and adjust by feel, you don't have to see how your input caused the truck to react, you adjust the input on the fly based on what your backside is telling you. Whereas having to visually analyze how the truck responded will rarely get you to exactly the input you need. You have to chase the proper reaction rather than instinctively feeling it. It'd be like trying to control the throttle with an on/off switch rather than a rheostat.

 

Lol, tell that to the Abilene district of TEXDOT. Last week when I left, the Odessa district had pretreated 20 and it was just wet despite the snow/ice that was falling. Once I hit around the 260 and cross into the Abilene district, the roads quickly turned to ####. That's why I ended up sitting for 4 hours in Cisco because the road had iced up and light loads couldn't climb the hill. They finally dispatched two sand trucks to help out the two trucks blocking the road. One was a Mesilla Valley Transportation ProStar. Doesn't help that Royal Jones specs his trucks with single drive axles and a tag axle.

 

Welcome to TTR! Keep surfing around the site, as there's truly a TON of great info on here from what seems to be some even greater guys and gals willing to share their experience and help others out, IMO.

 

True. And sometimes the staff is even helpful.

 

Yeah, but that's a rare thing!