Tandem Cheat Sheet?

Simple.

Measure 41 feet along the side of the trailer to the back from the center of the kingpin and put a mark.

Pick up a small rock or some other sharp, throw-away instrument and use it to draw an arrow on the part of the tandems just below the rail with all the holes in it to indicate where the front pin is when you move the tandems. Reason for this, once you release the pins and move the tandems either way, its hard to remember exactly where the pin is at in relation to the holes.

Slide your tandems so that the center of the rear axle lines up with that mark you made on the side of the trailer. If the pin lines up perfectly with a hole, then that's great, just keep in mind that not every trailer will be exactly the same so the tandems may have to be moved slightly a little further forward to allow the pins to engage with the holes.

 

What he said. Again, the states measure in feet and inches, not holes. That may be why there's no info on holes, or at least none that I can find.
A certain hole may give you the maximum kp setting, but it might not give you legal axle weights. You can talk holes at a scale, but they'll talk weight and kp distance.

I found it easy to carry a tape measure (75 feet). I'd lay the tape on the ground and mark the trailer at whatever maximum I needed, say, 40 feet measured from the king pin--it took just a moment. Then I'd scale for axle weights and slide the tandem if I had to--I knew how far back I could go. It was a matter of getting the axle weights right and then not exceeding state maximum kp settings, not a matter of which hole. Whatever hole it happened to be was the hole it happened to be. I've seen a lot of drivers use this method. If you have to go back to a shipper for a load shift, you show them weight and kp settings. You can't say, "It has to be in this hole."

Too, every load was different for us; 45K of one product wouldn't scale like 45K of another product--there was no one hole that always worked.

I can't recall anyone being concerned about holes--it was always weight and distance. Weight was the variable. The hole was the last part of the process, not the first. Also, we had sliding 5th wheels and where we set the 5th wheel was determined by weight, not slots in the 5th wheel rail.

 

At one point I thought about giving Utility and Wabash a call and asking them if they had any information on that but when I figured out my own formula, I figured if they did, it probly wouldn't be 100% accurate since they probly don't make everything exactly the same every time. Besides, I've had trailers where the holes were 6 inches apart and others that were 4 inches a part.

For me, since all of our trailers have the kingpin set 3 feet back from the front of the trailer, every time I get a different trailer, I take my tape measure and measure out 7'6", 9' and 10' from the back. It amounts to the same measurement as measuring from the kingpin 40', 41' and 42'6".

That ain't no joke. How its loaded and what yer hauling changes a lot of things.

 

Yeah, but are you ever truly legal in California? They have so many laws, chances are you are breaking a few of them at any given time and not know it.

 

Indiana has the same kingpin distance law as California so
until that day comes when Indiana starts enforcing it as much as California does, California won't be the only state that he won't be legal in while runnin' the tandems at 41'.

True, but we're talkin about being legal as far as kingpin distance distance goes......

All the other retarded laws that Commiefornia has is irrelevant to this discussion.

 

10-4 on hole spacing differences!

I've prowled trailer manufacturers' websites for pin hole info like we're talking about. There's nothing on any of them--don't even say that buyers can spec the distance between holes.

I once hooked a trailer that had "California 40'" and a mark on the side of the trailer. It just didn't look right to me (I ran in and out of California a lot with 53' trailers), so I measured it: 41 feet 5 inches! My load was heavy, too: paper rolls. Would have been expensive.

 

if it cant scale at or infront of the 41 mark then take it back or dodge the scales

 

florida has no axle weights, which means as long as a driver doesn't go over the rating on the tires they're legal, florida does follow the bridge law as if it was the gospel, which means you can not have more then 64k (?) between any two axle groups. so much for the distance from the king pin to the center or the rear axle on the trailer, it's different for pretty much every state, but Cali and Utah have to two shortest distances, and supposedly Cali loves to inforce theirs. i've driven from Miami to Jacksonville, with my tandems slide all the way to the back jus because the guide rail was bent and i couldn't slide them forward. Scale noticed it and mentioned it to me over the mic, i told them the guides were damaged and i was takin it to the yard for repairs, they just told me to watch my turns.

 

Yeah! Unless you're going to California (IF you go to California )

 

wherea california????????