Steep Downhill and you need to downshift

Had I time to get to 1st or 2nd that day..... went from 5 to 4 way too quick... and thought I'd lost 4 and nine. When I went back on the upgrade "right after" the dang redlight exit.... must've been 12% or more... had to pull an uphill about the same, after the redlight... 4th was lagging....did the skippidy doo... wife almost crying, saying "we're gonna roll backwards!" ... took forever to heave up, having not been geared right to start. It took every bit of my "best" braking and shifting maneuvers that day. I skipped 4 on the uphill, which sucked..esp with the surge~! .... and then 9th was an issue getting back to speed... really thought I broke the teeth. Somehow, the truck recovered. To this day, no clue.
Agree with you on the crooked number, man. Had I known; yep... I would've dropped her way sooner. I don't run that way anymore.. I take the 2 lanes. No warning, whatsoever on some of those freeways.

 

Its not often that I had the need to get that thing under control being surprised by a grade. Which is one of the reasons I go down the mountain at a slow enough speed so that the brakes are cold and air is ready by the ton.

Once in a while Ive had problems on a hill steep enough that something needs doing right now. I would invest the brakes heavy enough to drop the rpms to almost idle and then shift several gears down the tree as far as I can get away with it. if necessary, do it again. That usually got me down to about 20 and halfway down the low end. At that point it's time to set up the jake. The brakes would be already enough heat to smoke. Those will need a couple hours to cool.

I don't talk about shifting below torque at idle too often, it's too easy to scratch one too low and miss the one and then watch the whole thing go downhill from there.

As far as the rollover on Donner in the video. It's already way too fast. Braking just made it worse. My solution would be to rub that center divider. The price of doing that is almost too high, the fuel tanks for one. Without a skirt you could rip em. And if the divider has bad lines it could catch you and turn you into something of a ping pong ball which then wrecks. That truck was already doomed by speed long before it reached that one curve set. They should have essentially burnt the brakes and glazed the drums in a final stop designed to save themselves before they got too far.(The price might have been a total truck fire too...) But I suspect they were caught up for too long in the problem of too fast and so forth. Sometimes people in that situation for the first time don't understand that if they don't get it stopped now they probably will meet death or worse.

Ive gone down hills too fast a couple of times before Partly through my own idiot driving. If the mountain did not have a curve like that in it you could come out of there at 150 scared to death but no one is hurt. Much. But in this case the mountain took their lives. And it was a waste because they did it to themselves allowing that thing to have that kind of speed.

If you are careful on any mountain balanced on the jake without touching your brakes, you have a cold set of brakes and a ton of air to use if you are too fast. Usually your speeds are so slow sometimes it's not possible to be too fast. If you are issued a truck without a jake then your speeds will be even slower. And my advice would be to not use that non jake truck. I used to run 322 over the mountain many times without a jake and it's a tense experience every time. Im glad I don't have to do it.

 

Preparedness and physics do not always coincide. Regardless!~

 

^^^^ Like my scenario above... no warning, whistles, bells, .... #### shows up. I still think this is an awesome thread, for the WTF moments that many a driver may entail. Again, good job @Lepton1 .

 

Donner pass has road signs heading westbound that tell you how to take the hills with no jake brake at all.

Great details like 45 on this stretch, let er drift to cool your brakes, 50 down this stretch and the checkered flag close to the bottom to let you know you made it.

East bound is hold it back till the first lookout then ride it at 50 till the big turnout

Ashland and Cabbage without a jake both have hold on, pucker up and slow to 20 mph signs.

 

Yes, in the signage etc Donner is superior to all mountains I have run with very few exceptions, Black, Eagle, Spotted Wolf etc. Many more give you all the pre-battle information at the top and sometimes all the way down as does Black (It's in the Carolinas/Virginia area, I don't exactly recall where it is at the moment, although I should. Anyone who makes it to Black has already run a sort of kindergarden of mountain school in the smokies prior to arrival there. My spouse and I decided that Black was her graduation course in training, She got to run it but not before being taught a walk around checking brake temps wheel conditions and a pre-trip etc plus whatever information offered by the State at the top about the hill.

Donner can and will be run by trucks without jakes because of the signage. When you reach a certain point, you are still downgrade in a sort but gravity itself maintains your 28 to 36 mph speed as it will, letting her literally drift according to nature. Your speed will vary. In gear at idle with no power applied but brakes charged and ready. It will take a certain amount of distance to drift. (Not you young people carreening around corners in cars.. it's not that kind of drift) it is a oppertunity also to cool your wheels and rig for a while. Oil temps, jake parts etc. Even yourself, your nerves perhaps. A chance to take in the scenery. A dozen people in a family have died on that pass trying to gamble on early winter to get through but only trapped for months until eating the tree bark itself to fight hunger and stave off the awful specter of cannablism. Which some people will not do. (I don't.. and i never been in that situation..)

Donner is a wonderful area for me, it does not hold any horrors for me because partly investement by the states in the signage that cover that entire grade telling you in your trucker language what you must do. Never mind the cars and people around you. If you are drifting along at 20 or whatever you are exactly where everyone expects you to be none of the hostility etc for holding up traffic etc as you might see in the east coast.

Where I live I don't have a mountain which makes me somewhat depressed. What I do have is the Ozarks which is pretty small say 400 to 1100 feet but it is straight up and straight down sometimes. and it does not take too many miles to get up here into the hills. Some roads in winter are sometimes cut by the ice flows in winter storms which create a sort of a ditch several feet deep that needs crossing by a old world war one technique of chain sawing wood until you fill in 10 feet wide and as much as you cut with a chain saw to get your vehicle across if it has not already been done. The state maintains a few dumptrucks with gravel to throw into the damaged area to keep people moving until a rebuilding can happen in the spring.

There are old roads in trucking in western Arkansas that have signs and use words like Crooked. They mean crooked. Even 5 mph in some of the outrageous spots will kill you because it's too fast for a semi. But fortunatly it's being slowly built with new highways such as 49 I think it's is between Fort Smith on down to Texakarna and eventually Shreveport etc. Maybe Sabine Pass and Texas. Not sure yet.

This post is about Donner more than anything else the signage there is really a example of how to have a mountain covered in them with specific information to you so you can understand what is what and get through safely.

If you want a exploration of early trucking, go to you tube and visit Old Fancy Gap, it's a two lane road before the Interstate 77 was built. It's banned to big trucks now but people have made good quality video on some of these older routes and leave it to your imagination what it must have been for those before you on B macks, reos, chain drive and so forth.

Good luck.

 

All true.

For some reason, the experts in California, after lots of accidents, before jakes were readily available, decided that guidance was a good thing.

My first years running over Donner involved driving trucks with no jakes.

The stab brake thing, well that is a whole other conversation. The school I went to said a long downhill was a constant steady application all the way down. To do otherwise led to early smoking hot brakes, brake fires and sometimes brake failure.

That is not to say that the brakes were not blowing smoke on the bottom and sometimes on fire but you were at the bottom safely.

Used to be common to see Cornflake, Sailboat, ABF, DC, or ETMF wiggle waggons smoking and stinkin the place up.

 

Exactly. I don't care if you look like a rookie. If you have to come to a complete stop do it. First time I have ever seen this video and still can't determine what happened. Something went terribly wrong before that video even started. I prefer snub braking but the minute you decide that won't work and shifting isn't a option you get on the brakes hard and stop.

 

Look at the ditch and ask yourself, can I survive if I crash. If the answer is no. Slow down.