This is what scares me about doubles

Am I the only one starting to see a pattern here....

 

Once I worked as a relief driver going from Newark ca to Maryland and back.
There was a horrible snow storm in Texas on highway 40 going west through the panhandle and the entire freeway as well as all pavement was a solid sheet of ice covered with snow!
Every exit and every place a truck could stop was packed from the first free inch on the off-ramp to the last free inch of the on-ramp!
I could barely maneuver to get back on the freeway!
While I and a bunch of others in the same situation were still going, we saw a pickup truck towing a trailer spin out behind us.
After 10 minutes of talking trash on channel 9 about the local cop who was shadowing us ignoring the crash, he finally said "I guess I should go back and have a look" and we watched him turn around!!!

Just accelerate slow as you can, creep real slow around corners, and don't hit the brakes, perhaps a low setting on the Jake brakes if anything more than just your foot off the throttle.


A few years ago I was in Chicago in the center lane and the crown of the road combined with the light prevailing wind blew my trailer to the outside of the road right to the curb while going about 30ish. Thank God there were no cars next to me in that lane or parked on the shoulder because of the 2 inches of snow rule!

 

Lol, totally agree, they must have very low IQ

 

I don't get paid by the hr. its mileage at 53 per mile. I run Nashville to Atlanta 5 nites a week 510 miles round trip. that's 2550 miles per wk plus 9.50 per drop and hook and I sleep in my own bed every nite and home on weekends. best driving job ive had in my 20 years driving. some do drive like maniacs like those fedex contractors, but im running at a steady 65 all nite.

 

Yeah, that's a pretty good paycheck for driving a truck.

 

My terminal hasn't gotten me doubles qualified yet but I've only been with the company for about 6 months and only been driving about a year and a half. They've given me some training time in the yard but haven't gotten the safety guy down to road test me yet (which should be no big deal). I break sets in the yard sometimes if there's no empties available and tag dollies behind trailers all the time. The only thing I hate is getting the gear spotted in front of the boxes. I suck at backing up with those.

 

This is some scary $____t, no two ways about it:

 

PA Doesn't allow anything but standard doubles there turnpike is not the same as Ohio and Indiana and they don't even like those. PA was the last state in the country to allow standard doubles and it was only because CF lobbied the federal government to strong arm PA to changing there laws.

 

I hope I'm not bothering you folks because I'm not a trucking insider, my son has been driving since this past February and has been driving LTL since May. We are in the northeast. We had a small snow event last Friday night and it was super cold where he had to drive up to western MA/the Hudson Valley and he had huge problems with his windshield icing up. Of course he drives at night and said that even though he had the defrost blasting and he was sweating in the truck, ice was still constantly forming and it was terrifying b/c he could not see properly (headlights reflecting off the ice etc). Said he would have had to stop every 5 minutes to scrape it off. I don't think we're expecting any more super cold conditions in the next week, and he's going in early this evening to talk with whomever (I think his terminal manager) about what happened.

Multiple stops but he wound up getting good miles and making good time, but he was really shaken up afterwards. He drives doubles most of the time and is always paranoid about having hit someone without realizing it and this kind of kicked that in to high gear. He keeps running over the trip in his mind, he doesn't think he did anything but he kept second guessing himself all weekend (it's been like that all along somewhat and has been getting better over time. He has never actually had a preventable incident that he knows of).

I don't know trucking at all, but it sounds to me like there was something wrong with his truck/defrost. Although he said maybe it was just too cold for the defrost to keep ice from forming when you are driving 60+ MPH.

Scratching my head, if this situation was normal you would think no one would be able to drive truck at night way up north. Have any of you had an experience like this, and what did you do?

 

In my experience, that's just what happens. With the heat blasting at the windshield, the snow melts and since it's on the outside with the wind blowing on it it freezes to the wipers.. One thing I did was drive without the defrost on. That was the snow doesn't hit a warm windshield and melt. Even then that wasn't foolproof. I'm sure there are others that have better tricks.