Winter Driving

[terryandrene]

Lots of good advice for all types of trucks, particularly that brought up by 'drbna'.

When we first started expediting, we often drove through inclement weather when we should have parked and slept. We were caught up in the desire to get this all-important freight to the customer during the timeframe to which we agreed; no amount of bad weather was going to keep us from satisfying our contract. Part of my attitude stemmed from my 30 year US Coast Guard career of searching and rescuing in any weather condition and part was provided by weather ignorant dispatchers who provided constant encouragement with their never ending Qualcomm messages such as: "are you moving yet?"; "the customer will have to shut down without the freight"; "what's your ETA, can you go any faster?; or, "we need to satisfy this customer".

Those days of weather related anxiety are long over and I no longer place the customers' freight needs ahead of the safety of Rene', Terry, other travelers, the truck or the freight, in that order.

Force Majeure This is a term that should be in every owner/operators contract or lease agreement. It is an act of God. It is any occurance that is not caused by human intervention or negligence, such as floods, lightning or icy roads. It is also an unexpected event that crucially affects somebody’s ability to do something and can be put forward in law as an excuse for not having carried out the terms of an agreement. Rene' and I have informed our carrier on two occasions that we were exercising the force majeure provision of our lease agreement. This not only allowed us an uncontested stop while awaiting acceptable driving conditions, it prevented a charge-back for late delivery, both by our carrier and its customer. A force majeure declaration should also prevent a statistical 'service failure' on the drivers record.

Drive safe

 

[Broompilot]

RE: Keep Warm RE: Winter Driving

Caffee 40-45 mph is when I use the flashers, but below 40mph I consider pulling off I am using my 11 hours going no where its not safe at 45 than its not worth risking a tow or an accident. My disptach would hate that but its not there truck and safe late delivery is better than a damage claim. Another driver gave me that advice and think about it I thought it was worth the cup of coffee.

Last year I almost lost it big, really big. Utica NY N on what ever highway going toward Watertown, rain turned to large snow flakes, road was only wet, soon slush, than snow covered corrected speed accordingly seemed to be doing fine and since I grew up in Mich know how to drive in this stuff. Deep hill or Mtn, warning signs, adjust speed down to 30, reverse curves not quite hair pins, back end comes out, vehicle in front of me decides to slow to 15 and I am comming up on him at 25 but applying the brakes only increases the speed ABS is not doing any good on ice under snow (my fault for not realizing how much the temp has changed) I somehow manage not to run him down and keep the truck going down hill but all over the road had another vehicle been comming toward me I would have taken it out I have now slowed it to about 20 and every turn the rear end is not behind me.

Warning these downhills is where we can loose it easily, thought I had it under control but did not. Sure was lucky, very lucky. A little expierence did not hurt either. Hope this helps those who read it do not trust a downhill decent and watch for 4 wheelers all of a sudden become scared and slow to a crawl on a down hill.

I was scared to death, I really felt like getting out and putting my fingers down my throat once I realized I was finially OK.

 

[babs3361]

drbna's Advice is the best advice on this post. Been driving T/T since 1980 and I'm from The west side of Mich. Not that that makes me a expert or anything. I not afraid of the snow I respect it. Using the clutch to brake works very well, But do not reengage clutch untill u come to a stop or are very slow, or better yet put it in neutral. Reengaging the clutch will put you into a spin. There is no load worth your or anyone elses life. GM proved that to us. We were heading down to Shreveport La. At Memphis The sleet started. Every 15 min we were getting a call from dispatch where are u at(company had no QC). Product is hot needs to get there. We were avg. 20 to 25 mph. It took 10 hrs to get from Memphis to Shreveport. We got there at 23:00 and recieving informed us that they were going home in a half hour and would not unload us untill 07:00. We had not stopped for anything and our truck is not set up to go RVing. Hungry, stressed, and very angry we have decided to never let anyone put us in that position again. (We were only into the expedited business for a month)

 

[Moot]

I thought I would resurrect this post. I have already had two encounters of the white kind this year. The first one I was oblivious to what I was headed into until I saw the "Winter Weather Advisory" sign lit up on I-90 in South Dakota.

Please add more tips to get us physically and mentally prepared for winter driving.