What would you expect a new driver to have done?

So I was very rarely running into trailers where one hub would have driver servicable sight glass and plug. What I remembered was to check it for oil and fill with specific hub gear oil, which I would do after looking inside and seeing black stinky gunk I thought was burnt/overused oil from lack of maintenance/being run dry for thousands of miles by lazy previous drivers. I'm sure experienced drivers might guess where this is going.

I would call it in and be told to leave it for repairs at one of our local terminal after it was below fill level after two fills. Until the most recent time when the mechanic took me over to it and explained.

Well, for those who haven't guessed the issue began with a lack of parts. So rather than wait for the right part (a hub with a vent and without a plug or fill lines) the mechanics would take hub covers for oil hubs and put them on non-driver service grease hubs. Which explains why I so rarely would see one and always with three grease hubs.

So, new, intermediate, and experienced drivers beware. If you see one or two oil hubs on a trailer don't just go filling them up like school told you to do.

 

I'd check it every fifty miles while doing safety checks comparing tire temps, inspecting inside and outside rims for heat and leaking oil, brake drums and brake pads for oil etc. I'd drive constantly checking to see if the tires were wobbling too.

I figured the hub was either so ignored that it needed a ton of fliuid or was leaking somewhere I couldn't identify with the small amount of fluid that goes in to reach the fill line in two goes.

I did everything by the book but they don't author those things for the "real world". As for the value of the trailers most of them are from the late 90's and early 2000's sooooo I'm used to broken POS. I've had a few where the road service had to use the paper reg because the VIN plate literally rusted off the center beam.

Running aged equipment helps keep costs low and pads my paycheck or so I tell myself during my two "free" hours broke down nearly every week...