Tug test is not a check for connection, it is a brake check

Anyone who use to run Hunts Point or NYC in the 70’s and 80’s ALWAYS visually checked their fifth wheel before they drove off. I still do it everywhere I stop!

 

I do 2 Tug tests every time I connect a new trailer. First with landing gear down, to check kingpin is securely connected, then with landing gear up, to be sure the trailer brakes are working.

 

Yes. I have seen a KLLM driver get their loaded trailer from the back of the Waco, TX Mars shipping facility all the way to the front gate before the trailer pulled off the 5th wheel and dropped behind him.

 

Good advice.

 

I never checked mine after stopping but I was a milk hauler.

No one would dare fok with the milk man. Dry cereal sucs in the morning .

 

A friend of mine got in his truck hooked up to a set flat deck trailers and
drove 100 miles to load them with steel balls four inches in diameter that
were used by a copper/gold mine to process/crush ore.
When he turned to the yard 200 miles later as he turned into the yard the trailers
dropped on the road in front of the shop and all the steel balls
went tumbling down the road for over a mile.
He drove just over 200 miles with a 5th wheel not properly latched.
They spent a few days picking them up by hand and loading them on the
trailer again.

 

He didn't check to see if he was latched? You might say that takes....balls of steel...

 

Can you imagine thousands of 4" steel balls on the Interstate going 70 mph?

 

"Final Destination 12 in theaters near you."

 

Lol