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For big fleets, yeah. I suspect it's more to do with them being cheaper than anything else. The company I'm at NOW just goes for automatics for various reasons
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Aug 29, 2013 12:02
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Javid posted:For big fleets, yeah. I suspect it's more to do with them being cheaper than anything else. The company I'm at NOW just goes for automatics for various reasons Makes sense. Just seemed wrong to me for a minute because American brands over here are pretty much assumed to be running an 18 speed. You'd have to go searching for one that wasn't. I dunno, all the runs between the major capitals, you wouldnt ever need to split the low box, but I guess it makes a difference when you start heading a little bit inland and its all hill climbs all day.
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Aug 29, 2013 12:39
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What's your weight limit, though? If it's higher or you're pulling multiples the bigger gearbox might be less optional. Even Swift's cheap asses spring for the 18 speed when you jump from normal 80k to 105.5 heavy haul loads. gently caress knows what a road train weighs.
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Aug 29, 2013 14:28
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Rudager posted:So one of the drivers at work today was making fun of how every North American Youtube trucker has a 10 speed. Is that a common thing up there? Here in the downunder it's an 18 speed Eaton, 14 speed Synchro box in the Euro's, or an Auto for the really big guys who just want something anyone can drive, but the far majority of trucks on our roads are 18's. I'm sure there's a 10 speed or two out there, but I don't know anyone that's ever seen one. But can he hit 153 kph?  Or if he wants 36 gears he can always play this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3562845 But yeah, most companies are speccing their trucks low for OTR service, I trained on a 13 speed, but now drive a 10 speed, but would love it if I could split the top box on a couple of hills. Hell some of our heavy trucks don't even split the bottom and they do 75+ @ 129,000+ all day. If you REALLY want to blow his mind on stupid poo poo, tell him there are companies in the US that shut off the engine brake on some of their trucks, or that I drove a truck with four pedals! See if he can figure that one out.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:15
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Javid posted:gently caress knows what a road train weighs. On average, 176,369-264,554 lb. Quads are up too 298,726 lb and if its a quad with a Tri-drive prime mover and tri-axle dollys, they top out at 374,785 lb.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:21
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Ferremit posted:On average, 176,369-264,554 lb. Quads are up too 298,726 lb and if its a quad with a Tri-drive prime mover and tri-axle dollys, they top out at 374,785 lb. Yeah when you are topped out for 80,000 pounds for Interstate OTR travel (kinda) now you know why we don't need 18 gears.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:26
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InterceptorV8 posted:... there are companies in the US that shut off the engine brake on some of their trucks, ... What? Why would you do that? What possible benefit is there to the company?
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Sep 1, 2013 06:13
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"gently caress you, DRIVER"
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Sep 1, 2013 07:22
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Cakefool posted:What? Why would you do that? What possible benefit is there to the company? A lot of areas ban jake brakes, often citywide. I'd guess the penny pinchers did it to avoid fines.
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Sep 1, 2013 11:51
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I've been watching too many youtube videos. I've decided that my unicorn is a stretched frame 362 Pete or K100 Kenworth with a 12v-71 or an 8v-92 and probably an 18 speed because I like shifting fuckin gears ok?
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Sep 1, 2013 17:56
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some texas redneck posted:A lot of areas ban jake brakes, often citywide. I'd guess the penny pinchers did it to avoid fines. Nope. A Texas company does it to "teach" people how to go down mountains without it. That's their whole reason. I'd love to be the supplier for their brake shoes.
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Sep 1, 2013 19:52
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InterceptorV8 posted:Nope. Yes, better roast the brakes than use the right tool for the job.
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Sep 1, 2013 20:09
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Mooseykins posted:Yes, better roast the brakes than use the right tool for the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7EfnYwpmOE On every grade.
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Sep 1, 2013 21:13
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Wouldn't that be really, really dangerous? Aren't there a lot of grades that you simply can't go down fully loaded only using the standard brakes?
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Sep 1, 2013 22:16
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jamal posted:Wouldn't that be really, really dangerous? Aren't there a lot of grades that you simply can't go down fully loaded only using the standard brakes? Wasn't that long ago there was what was called West Coast and East Coast trucks, ones with engine brakes, and ones without. You can go down a grade without a engine brake, put your four ways on, go to the low side, and just crawl. It's like worse than going down the grapevine.
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Sep 1, 2013 22:43
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InterceptorV8 posted:Wasn't that long ago there was what was called West Coast and East Coast trucks, ones with engine brakes, and ones without. You can go down a grade without a engine brake, put your four ways on, go to the low side, and just crawl. It's like worse than going down the grapevine.
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Sep 2, 2013 00:31
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My dash is more wire than plastic at this point. Remaining electrical gremlins: -bunk heater blower fan dead, A/c and heater core work. -Front A/C randomly defaults to OMG BURNING MY FACE OFF -Stereo randomly goes into "gently caress you, i do what i want" mode, in which my music keeps playing but i have no control beyond that. I think that might be the connection to the faceplate. -entire fog light circuit dead. And i don't know if you could consider it an electrical gremlin, but both headliner speakers have come unglued, and the speaker magnets stuck to the cab. I honked at an rear end in a top hat for driving up the shoulder in a traffic jam to get ahead, and the air horn stuck to the speaker magnet and stuck on until i reached in and freed it. When i have my music turned up, inside the truck it sounds like a symphony, outside the truck it sounds like a rave. I'm tempted to install some aftermarket stuff, there's a hole pre-cut under the sleeper for a 12" sub, but most of the speaker wire is barely thicker than a twist tie, and i don't feel like disassembling everything to install speakers. edit: also, mack ordered me a huge box of the metal mini blade breakers for $2.50 a piece. they replace mini blade fuses, and last forever. They're backordered and they can't gaurantee they come in, but if they do it's 75 bucks to never have to buy a fuse again. My mack came with them and it's been a blessing. Hearing a click and waiting 10 seconds when you gently caress something up sure beats replacing a fuse every time you do. Powershift fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 03:01
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Breakers are bad news because if you have a bad circuit, the breaker will just trip and trip and trip until your wires or something more expensive burns instead of the fuse you replaced.
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Sep 2, 2013 03:28
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The cheap rear end plastic breakers, yes. The metal ones in the mack take a couple minutes to reset themselves, and make a very loud click when they're tripped. I would have destroyed quite a few fuses figuring out why the hell my 220 watt work lights were tripping a 40 amp circuit. It ended up being the interior sleeper box lights being wired from the same switch to a relay on the main circuit panel as the exterior lights wired to a secondary fuse panel in the sleeper. These trucks are built under the assumption that nothing will ever be changed with them, and nothing will ever go wrong. If it's not 8,000,000*c tomorrow, i'm going to wire an entirely new fog light circuit from the switch to the lights. I have to duck and dodge around retarded laws, i'm planning on putting 4 hella dual beams(2 spot, 2 flood). By law, they all have to be under the center line of the headlight, 2 can't be active while the high beams are on, the other 2 can't be active while low beams are on. Despite the fact that i'll only really be using them off-road. I'll have to wire in a super secret switch that allows me to run high beams and all 4 lights. installing a 50" rigid light bar and calling it a day is tempting, but 4 #30 lights vs a $1800 light and getting rocks chucked at me by logging trucks pretty much made the decision for me.
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Sep 2, 2013 03:49
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stevobob posted:Breakers are bad news because if you have a bad circuit, the breaker will just trip and trip and trip until your wires or something more expensive burns instead of the fuse you replaced. Naw, it isn't that bad, I have them in my rig and it's more like a house breaker. Pop. WTF, open dash find the raised one, reset.
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Sep 2, 2013 04:04
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Powershift posted:I'm tempted to install some aftermarket stuff, there's a hole pre-cut under the sleeper for a 12" sub, but most of the speaker wire is barely thicker than a twist tie, and i don't feel like disassembling everything to install speakers. A small part of me always wondered if big trucks ever wound up with decent stereos. 
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Sep 2, 2013 07:00
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some texas redneck posted:A small part of me always wondered if big trucks ever wound up with decent stereos. I've been in a linehaul Volvo here in NZ that boasted 12 speakers including a sub tube. Easily loud enough to not hear it under max load.
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Sep 2, 2013 09:48
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Here in Sweden, most truckers driving longhaul (a very varied term in Sweden, but mostly taken to mean you sleep in the cabin sometimes instead of going home every night) have one rig that is "theirs", and quite often if you're lucky to have "your" rig replaced when you're around you can get to have a lot of say in equipment, since a couple of extra speakers and some nicer seats is a very small part of the final price on a truck. With that said, my friends company bought a new truck which happened to be the one that the boss' son drives. He got a built in PS3, a LED tv, and stereo equipment worth a little over $7000 put in...
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Sep 2, 2013 15:44
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Vice just came out with a pretty sweet documentary about trucking through Africa. I learned you can stop Diff leaks with bananas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GslPzhFLyas
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Sep 2, 2013 17:55
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Preoptopus posted:Vice just came out with a pretty sweet documentary about trucking through Africa. I watched this last week and loved how classically it represented what was wrong on both sides of the coin. The blatant lies and corruption among working class and officials of South and Sub-Saharan Africa vs 'invading capitalist' American company filly a niche that otherwise would not be serviced. The scrappy little start up American company who despite being 30 (60?) days late, still pulled through on the job 4,800kms later. Also that banana thing made me chuckle as I remembered it being mentioned in that children's movie called Matilda. Bananas and Sawdust in the gearbox to quiet it down. Anphear fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 04:50
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Anphear posted:Also that banana thing made me chuckle as I remembered it being mentioned in that children's movie called Matilda. Bananas and Sawdust in the gearbox to quiet it down. Titghts/nylons is another one. 
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Sep 3, 2013 12:05
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Consider me sobered. Just lost the steering assistance, fully loaded, in a roundabout... Guess the guys behind me probably wondered why it took me three tries to turn at my exit.
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Sep 6, 2013 11:39
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I've been watching more youtube truckers, and I really don't understand why you north American guys don't run more bigger combinations. Our roads here in Australia about 100x worse, and at least here on the east coast, it's all hills and corners, and yet 90% of trucks you see outside of a city is a B-Double, it's just more effecient. 2 B-doubles replaces 3 singles, they don't burn much more in the way of fuel (for example our guys aim at 1.6L/km and google tells me that's 0.422 gallons per mile) and they're not drastically less maneuverable than a single. They're even a touch bit faster since you can take corners a bit faster with 3 more axels working to stop you tipping over (if you look at those pics from the front page of that A-B quad, the dolly/converter is right after the first trailer because the B-triple combo behind it it's a thousand times more stable than putting a single trailer at the back under a dolly) It takes a bit of practise to reverse them, which may be why we run alot more tautliners (edit: sorry, curtainsiders) than you guys, since they can just drive in, pull the curtains back, and drive out compared to solid Pantech doubles that are a bit more annoying since it involves alot of hitching and un-hitching. I dunno, it just blows my mind that you guys have all these perfect, smooth, straight, highways and yet only run singles. Anyway, I'll have to get some photo's off the new trucks at work because they are some drat sexy beasts. DonVincenzo posted:Consider me sobered. Just lost the steering assistance, fully loaded, in a roundabout... At my last job, we had a guy come pick up a trailer with a fully loaded container with an old transtar. He got about 10 meters and the rod to the steering box clean snapped in two right where the thread starts into the steering box. I went out to find him about 5 minutes later about 10 smokes into his pack of cigarettes. Oh did I mention at that time the area we were in was under heavy flooding and they'd literally only just opened up the road an hour ago, so all he could think about was what would have happened if he had of been cruising back to the yard at 100km/h basically surrounded by a lake. Rudager fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 12:10
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Rudager posted:I've been watching more youtube truckers, and I really don't understand why you north American guys don't run more bigger combinations. Because California
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Sep 6, 2013 15:53
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Rudager posted:I've been watching more youtube truckers, and I really don't understand why you north American guys don't run more bigger combinations. Our roads here in Australia about 100x worse, and at least here on the east coast, it's all hills and corners, and yet 90% of trucks you see outside of a city is a B-Double, it's just more effecient. Your B-doubles are pretty much a Rocky Mountain double in reverse. Which makes them illegal in California.  It just depends on the state, and the states next to it as well, you'll see fun combos in some states, like a 48 foot spread towing a 53 foot spread drop deck. But welcome to the fun world of OTR in the USA, where you are limited to 55mph in some states, and 80mph in others! You also only have 22 million people living in Australia, we have almost 12 million illegal in the US, and we have like 300 million people that don't know how to use their turn signals.
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Sep 6, 2013 18:55
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InterceptorV8 posted:It just depends on the state, and the states next to it as well, you'll see fun combos in some states, like a 48 foot spread towing a 53 foot spread drop deck. But welcome to the fun world of OTR in the USA, where you are limited to 55mph in some states, and 80mph in others! You also only have 22 million people living in Australia, we have almost 12 million illegal in the US, and we have like 300 million people that don't know how to use their turn signals. I found that the Feds have compiled the state-by-state exemptions, showing how much of a disjointed disaster it is. http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=32a1bf7a894281cf5a28759c274907ef&r=PART&n=23y1.0.1.7.33#23:1.0.1.7.33.0.1.14.29 On the Ohio Turnpike you usually can't go ten miles without seeing a UPS double or triple hauling along. Doubles can have 102 feet from the front of the first trailer to the rear of the second, triples only get 95 feet. That means they can't run full length doubles, but they can run one full and one California-sized unit or two Californias. Considering the short trailers are sort of specialized to this use I'm not 100% on why they don't use the B-double style with an integrated fifth wheel, but all we see are the "double road train" and "triple road train" styles, C and G on Wiki's chart, limited by length. Probably something to do with backing in to loading docks, I'd imagine the integrated units make loading/unloading a challenge. 
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Sep 7, 2013 02:35
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In alberta, turnpike doubles can run on certain highways, and can run 2 53 foot trailers, with a dolly inbetween you're looking at 115 feet of trailer. Super Bs are a pretty common sight, and were even used offroad up until a few years ago when most were replaced with tri drive trucks and either 3 axle trailers or quad wagons. A tri-drive with a quad wagon and a 20,000lb front end can run nearly as heavy as a super-b, without dragging 80 feet and 5 axles of dead weight, and in the hands of a skilled driver, can turn around in the turning circle of the truck. With what i do, tandem drive/tridom trailer is still the preferred rig-up, you get the economy of a tandom/tandom on the highway, the weight of 6 axles, and the ability to put over 50% of the weight on the tractor if needed. edit: i linked an album on the last page with photos from the road, might as well link an album from the means of conveyance, headlined of course, by my two favorite pictures.   http://imgur.com/a/DTKg5 Powershift fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 03:45
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wolrah posted:I found that the Feds have compiled the state-by-state exemptions, showing how much of a disjointed disaster it is. There are reverse b doubles flatbeds I see quite a bit. Instead of the first trailer being short, the first is long, but has a tri-axle with the 5th wheel plate, then hooks into a smaller flat. But it's a god damned mess, and one of these days I think I'm going to just switch to Intrastate. Hell, I'm barely an interstate driver anymore anyway. Less headaches, AND I get to watch people get confused as gently caress at this scale which makes it all worth it. http://goo.gl/maps/0RKbE
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Sep 7, 2013 19:48
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InterceptorV8 posted:I get to watch people get confused as gently caress at this scale which makes it all worth it. So N-bound and S-bound trucks alternate through? Do those arrows point the way I think they do? 
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Sep 7, 2013 20:19
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madeintaipei posted:So N-bound and S-bound trucks alternate through? Do those arrows point the way I think they do? Yes, we play chicken.
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Sep 8, 2013 00:29
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texas has some rest stops like that, always made me uncomfortable
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Sep 8, 2013 01:37
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ijustam posted:texas has some rest stops like that, always made me uncomfortable It's loving funny as poo poo. I've seen the scale get closed because someone completely tarded out trying to cross it. I've seen just about every way to use the roadway to cross the scale, including backwards (not reverse, but still 180 degrees wrong)
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Sep 8, 2013 19:24
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Just couldn't wait to get home
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Sep 12, 2013 05:57
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"Home is wherever the gently caress you
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Sep 12, 2013 07:43
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`Nemesis posted:Just couldn't wait to get home That's a lot of poo poo in the sleeper window.
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Sep 12, 2013 08:19
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