Werner jackknives and blocks all lanes

i recall my first "few times" out mid-west/west, along the I-40 route..?? where i saw a set of triple 55's......my god, given my typical slow company truck, it took me 4 days to pass it..!!!!!

 

Everytime I got to salt lake city there's a bunch of grocery haulers running double 53's . Probably the only setup out there where they have a valid reason for cruising the middle lane at all times.

 

Usually the only times I see turnpike doubles like that in the east is along limited access highways (I-90/Mass Pike/NY Thruway/Ohio Turnpike/Indiana Toll Road,I-70/76 PA Turnpike).

 

Driver probably needed to spread the weight out to get past the scale house in Findlay,which is where the jackknife occurred. He might’ve also been heavy (perhaps too heavy) on fuel.

 

A 50k payload wouldn’t need all 4 axles on the ground. That’s only 4k more than my max with a big bunk and a regular van. If he was light and had too much pressure on the front lift axle he wouldn’t be able to control the truck. So unless they have their trailers set up to where they both drop or they’re both up then I’d say driver error played into this ordeal. Being general freight there is a chance they have their trailers idiotproofed I suppose, and don’t allow the driver access to pressure regulators and such. Either way, there’s no need for a trailer like that for a 50k payload.

 

I don’t know,never had to deal with a load that heavy. Like I said,the most we deal with is 46K. And even then there’s a possibility that the load would have to be reworked.
And we don’t have axle setups like that in our dry vans. The dry vans that we typically use for dedicated accounts (Coke for example) usually run super single tires.
Anheuser Busch isn’t exactly known for being light on their loads. And that driver was probably running between Ohio and Michigan.
It’s possible that having the pusher axles on the ground actually saved the trailer from splitting open,creating an even bigger mess!

 

All I’m getting at is if was really a 50k load there’s no need for 7 axles on the ground. It’s 4k more than a regular load that would put someone at 80k gross with a regular van. Probably lack of training or he simply thought that if he was loaded everything had to be on the ground no matter what. We ran 105k gross on 8 out west. If he took too much weight off his drives with the front trailer axle then that’s likely why he lost traction and jackknifed.

 

That was southwest airlines.