Profile For Last Shadow

Good to hear that first year is out of your system, I’ve been a rookie driver for almost 2 years now, congratulations.

Congrats. May you have many more successful years to come.

Serah, be safe out there, and yes praying does help.

First hand experience last evening. Was driving on US-287 from Amarillo to Wichita Falls with 43+k lbs. A mile before l got to the Quanah Loves, l was hit by a gust of wind and pushed to the middle of other lane. Thank God there was no other vehicle or truck beside me at the time.

Just prayed to reach the Loves in one piece where l shut down and sent a macro for late delivery due to "bad weather". It never crossed my mind that this could happen with such a heavy load.

Don't try to be a super hero. Stay safe out there. Its going to get worse.

UC, that is one of the smartest thing a truck driver can do, I applaud your decision, I am green myself with less than two years and I am also taking the same approach, with me I will take a hit on my miles but I rather take that than go into a ditch or have an accident due to weather conditions from my end or some other driver out there, I plan to drive for a long time till I retire, and I won’t be able to do it if I don’t have my license or confidence, keep trucking my friends.

I personally decided, being that I'm still relatively green when it comes to driving a rig during the winter months, to return to being Midwest regional during the upcoming winter season. I messaged my DBL of my intentions, and he said I'd have to take a 2 cpm pay cut, assuming to get me down to the standard Midwest regional rate. I'd rather build up my confidence at least one more season of winter driving before feeling confident enough to tackle the eastern mountains in such conditions.

While I do have experience in winter conditions from last year, my career was very much in it's infancy at that point, so I feel this is the best decision for me right now. I'd rather take a pay cut and run with less risk/stress. Plus, it's only a few months out of the year; I have plenty of time in the warmer months to run my happy little *** off and recoup the overall loss.

Thoughts on my choice?

Thanks Brett, like always your money bro.

I always felt it was very important for all of those reasons, but mostly because of safe braking. You really want a pretty even amount of weight on all axles so that no one set of axles is so light that it wants to lock up the wheels under braking.

If you can get your drive tandem and trailer tandem within about 2,000 pounds of each other you'll be fine. If one is going to be a little heavier than the other, I would prefer the drive tandem to be a little heavier than the trailer tandem for two reasons:

1) You want to make sure you're heavy enough on the drive tandem to get good traction under acceleration

2) If one of those tandem sets does break loose under braking, you'd want it to be your trailer tandem. A trailer jackknife, caused by your trailer tandem locking up, is relatively easy to notice and correct and it happens rather slowly. A tractor jackknife, where the tractor spins around because your drive tandem locked up, happens almost instantaneously and there's almost no chance of coming out of it once it starts. You're also in total control of the vehicle during a trailer jackknife, but you'll have no control of the vehicle after a tractor jackknife.

So locking up your drive tandem under braking is infinitely more dangerous than locking up your trailer tandem.

The tire wear and fuel mileage thing will come into play a little, also. So it's helpful to have good balance for those reasons too. But for me, safety under braking and traction under acceleration were the big reasons to have a good balance.

Also, you absolutely want to make sure you have as close to 12,000 on the steers as possible once you're above roughly 72,000 pounds. Most trucks are set up this way already. Losing traction on your steer axle during steering or braking can also be catastrophic, of course. So you want to make sure that your 5th wheel is as far forward as you can have it and still remain at about 12,000 pounds when loaded real heavy.

Well it's been almost 2 years since I became an OTR driver, everyday I still try to learn something that will make me more productive and safe, so question for all of you old timers, how important is it to have a well balance trailer, for the miles per gallon, to wear and tear on tires, to also include the effects of braking during winter, thanks please even if your new to the industry and know facts or experience share so we may learn or informed ourselves, I have been thinking about this subject as I see tandems placement on trailers as I roll down the roads, thanks.

My wife send me with a microwave, I didn't wanted cuz I thought it would take to much space, well now I have hot coffee and my meals are always hot, man I guess is true what they say, you ain't a real man until you have woman telling you what's good for you, lol

That 12v box oven Steve mentioned has been a workhorse and provided many tasty meals for me. Love that thing!

You need to have the memory of a cornerback in the NFL when they get burn on a play and forget about yesterday, you're not the only one the has failed the first try, so keep going, you got this.

It don't always work for me, but usually I take my 34 hours reset at a terminal so the shop can look at my truck if needed, do laundry, go grocery shopping, it works to perfection sometimes, but that's what I considered a day off, home time is sacred not to be confused.

Hopefully a day off is a 34 hour reset. Unfortunately it can be a maintenance problem instead.

Thanks for the info G-town.

I use a rain on tin roof app, it takes a while sometimes, but it always puts me to sleep, maybe I'm just old.