Ever put those safety chains to use?
03-06-2004, 02:21 AM
#61
Registered User
FMCSA does not specify but the way it is translated by DOT in any state is that if the hitch is a ball, as in gn or tag, it must have safety chains. If it is a king pin it needs no chains. By all practical means a properly set up gn should need no chains as 25% of the weight should be on the ball and the ball shank is as large as the smallest shank on a full semi king pin. As BBD runs, common upkeep says that you will never lose a trailer. Anyone that does not inspect it or does not know what is proper strength has no business on the road with a trailer.
Every once in a while some idoit backs under a trailer and does not check the slide bar is locked, drops the trailer. You are all forgeting one thing though, if the trailer breaks loose on a gn or fifth wheel properly set up, the nose is going down to the pavement and will exert more braking than any wheels can effect. Usually leaving a ditch in the blacktop. When I am loaded, if it were to come loose, there would be 2 1/2 tons digging into the pavement. In a real world, a heavy trailer would not come out of the bed if loaded. Empty trailers are more dangeous than loaded. On a gn we are not talking about 500 or a thousand pounds as in a tag along, we are talking about real weight that will probably drive the gn hitch through the floor of the pickup.
Safety chains on a gn are a joke for safety. FMCSA requires then and I as well as BBD runs legal with them, so both bases are covered. My ball is rated for 30,000 pounds and is the diameter of a kingpin, the nut is welded to the plate and the ball screws in. It has never come loose. The threaded shaft is 1 3/4 inches thick. Farmers around here run the hay trailers with out even a lock mechanism, it just sits on the ball. I have lived here in this farm country for 35 years and have never seen one come off. I have seen several trucks through the years that went over a bridge or cliff and the truck hung on the kingpin with the trailer holding it in the air. Ever look at a head on with a semi, usually the kingpin holds the accident and if anything comes apart it is the fifth wheel coming off the frame.
Most of this whole thread is hype and dreamed up situation. There are some unsafe rigs out there, but that is another story completely. Properly set up and maintained there is not a problem. Now if you want to talk about the dinkey rv setups that is a different story. The commercial setups are safe and get checked all thetime as BBD said earlier. There is no such a thing as a gn trailer coming unhooked and trying to pass you that is stool talk. As BBD said, the best thing a trailer can do if it breaks loose is drop to the ground and stop rather than putting the truck out of control, jacknifing and rolling down the highway 65 feet long, makes a real mess of anything in its path. Please show me one picture of a loose trailer (gn or fifth wheel) hitting a school bus on the side of the road. And how many hundred thousand trucks are out there?
Every once in a while some idoit backs under a trailer and does not check the slide bar is locked, drops the trailer. You are all forgeting one thing though, if the trailer breaks loose on a gn or fifth wheel properly set up, the nose is going down to the pavement and will exert more braking than any wheels can effect. Usually leaving a ditch in the blacktop. When I am loaded, if it were to come loose, there would be 2 1/2 tons digging into the pavement. In a real world, a heavy trailer would not come out of the bed if loaded. Empty trailers are more dangeous than loaded. On a gn we are not talking about 500 or a thousand pounds as in a tag along, we are talking about real weight that will probably drive the gn hitch through the floor of the pickup.
Safety chains on a gn are a joke for safety. FMCSA requires then and I as well as BBD runs legal with them, so both bases are covered. My ball is rated for 30,000 pounds and is the diameter of a kingpin, the nut is welded to the plate and the ball screws in. It has never come loose. The threaded shaft is 1 3/4 inches thick. Farmers around here run the hay trailers with out even a lock mechanism, it just sits on the ball. I have lived here in this farm country for 35 years and have never seen one come off. I have seen several trucks through the years that went over a bridge or cliff and the truck hung on the kingpin with the trailer holding it in the air. Ever look at a head on with a semi, usually the kingpin holds the accident and if anything comes apart it is the fifth wheel coming off the frame.
Most of this whole thread is hype and dreamed up situation. There are some unsafe rigs out there, but that is another story completely. Properly set up and maintained there is not a problem. Now if you want to talk about the dinkey rv setups that is a different story. The commercial setups are safe and get checked all thetime as BBD said earlier. There is no such a thing as a gn trailer coming unhooked and trying to pass you that is stool talk. As BBD said, the best thing a trailer can do if it breaks loose is drop to the ground and stop rather than putting the truck out of control, jacknifing and rolling down the highway 65 feet long, makes a real mess of anything in its path. Please show me one picture of a loose trailer (gn or fifth wheel) hitting a school bus on the side of the road. And how many hundred thousand trucks are out there?
03-08-2004, 01:47 PM
#62
Registered User
I hope that this does not step on too many toes, but it is an important issue, and yes I am very opinionated on this subject. I have been cut down on this board and others for running unsafe, too heavy, too fast, etc. This is my opinion on the subject, it all has to do with responsibility. Accidents happen, and yes, from time to time I mess up also.
This is a distressing thread to say the least. It’s sort of like locks keep an honest man out, but not the crook. The key to safety is to run safely. Anytime the trailer comes off the truck it is operator negligence, nothing else and the courts would handle it like that. The key to not killing kids on the highway is not government mandated safety features, but rather operator responsibility for the unit he is driving.
My truck is taken care of for safety. So my observations are with what I feel is proper, mechanically sound operation, not what the once a month or less owner will run into. My trailer has in the last month gotten four new brake assemblies and the remaining two were rebuilt. The wiring for the brakes are all soldered joints. Including the ground and brake feed are soldered to the pigtail plug for less voltage drop through the system. I carry in the glove compartment a voltmeter and now and then I check the brake voltage at the rear axle to make sure the voltage is up to snuff so far as voltage drops. This is also checked with the breakaway on for the same reasons. Trucks that have to go over scales and have DOT checks on the road must be up to snuff or they are shut down, fines and lost time.
The gooseneck plate on my truck is set up to general commercial truck standards. It is a steel plate bolted across the frame tied in at the sides of the frame with angle iron with grade 8 bolts to the frame and the plate on both sides. It is doubled in the middle so that the ball goes through 1-½ inches of steel with the nut welded on the bottom, and pinned. The only way the ball is coming off my frame is for the frame to come apart. The headstock of the trailer has an additional grade 8 bolt through the entire five inches and secured with an aircraft nut so that the hitch of the trailer cannot come loose. The breakaway battery is charged from the truck system and soon is getting a full sized battery in place of the gel cell.
I have some opinions of safety that will not impress many on this board, but they are from many miles of driving all sizes of truck and seeing the accidents, breakdowns, and near misses on the highway. First there needs to be some regulation of tag along trailers, which are inherently unsafe due to the design. Something like on any truck less than 26,000 gvwr, the trailer cannot be any heavier than the truck. The suburban with a 30-foot tag along behind it is the most dangerous thing on the road, in MHO. If a driver or truck does not feel safe at the speed limits and has to run slower, he has no business on the darn freeway. The safe speed limit is a flexible thing driven by the time and public acceptance. It used to be safe to run a rig at 80 in some areas, 75 in Tennessee. Then it was a serious safety violation to run over 55 for years. When actually 55 puts a driver to sleep and makes him much less alert.
Some of the RV type hitches and flip ups that are hauling heavy trailers scare the hell out of me. And then you see the cab and chassis that welds a 6-inch channel across the frame and sticks a ball on it and he is a trucker. I look at the dinky cost effective fifth wheel setups on many of the trucks and I really do not want to be around the darn truck on the highway. For safety reasons it should be illegal to run with a fifth wheel not locked from side movement. That is the purpose of a fifth wheel to make a flexible joint that does not sway. Ok turn them loose at the campground, but not on the highway. With them locked you don’t need six inches clearance to the bed rails either, two inches will do it.
Another commonly misunderstood item is brakes. If you don’t go over the axle weight rating of the vehicle, you have federally mandated brakes that will handle the weight of the vehicle. The truck brakes do not stop the trailer, the trailer brakes do. See the big difference of opinion here is the difference between commercial trucking and the occasional truck group. Like BBD said, I have never lost a trailer and know very well what I have for equipment and what to look for in weaknesses. If I should lose a trailer, I screwed up and I must handle the responsibility for not properly operating my truck. If a driver has doubt of his hookup, he needs to make it secure or stop running. It really scares me how many have reported losing or near losing a trailer, that is not acceptable. The safest way to go down the highway is with the flow of traffic, not slow so that everyone has to get around you. The proper spacing must be left between vehicles to stop in the event of an emergency stop with out running over the car in front of you. The more horsepower you have the safer you “can” drive by staying with the flow of traffic with less stress on hills and bad areas.
This thread was started over safety chains. If you have ever had to rely on them, you screwed up, not the truck, and corrective measures have to be taken. Tag alongs have to have them; a properly set up fifth wheel or gn does not need them and would probably kill you if they were stressed fully. Panic denotes that you will hit the brakes and have the hitch sitting on the console, not out the back. If your hitch setup needs safety chains, you need to fix it. It is unsafe. Can anything on your hitch break? If it can you need to fix it. If your gooseneck can possibly come off and pass you, you better get the weights set up right before it kills you and anyone else in its path. Tag along trailers float with a little positive hitch weight, a gooseneck is supposed to be a “semi” and have the proper percentage of weight on the hitch, and with this weight, coming unhooked, it will go down with a big bang and there is no control with or without safety chains. If that is not how your gooseneck works, loaded or empty, you have serious weight distribution problems to fix.
Except for losing a tanker on the ice, I have never had an accident with a combination vehicle. And when I flipped the tanker, the tractor stayed connected, I drove it home. I make sure my little truck is connected as strong as the big truck was.
This is a distressing thread to say the least. It’s sort of like locks keep an honest man out, but not the crook. The key to safety is to run safely. Anytime the trailer comes off the truck it is operator negligence, nothing else and the courts would handle it like that. The key to not killing kids on the highway is not government mandated safety features, but rather operator responsibility for the unit he is driving.
My truck is taken care of for safety. So my observations are with what I feel is proper, mechanically sound operation, not what the once a month or less owner will run into. My trailer has in the last month gotten four new brake assemblies and the remaining two were rebuilt. The wiring for the brakes are all soldered joints. Including the ground and brake feed are soldered to the pigtail plug for less voltage drop through the system. I carry in the glove compartment a voltmeter and now and then I check the brake voltage at the rear axle to make sure the voltage is up to snuff so far as voltage drops. This is also checked with the breakaway on for the same reasons. Trucks that have to go over scales and have DOT checks on the road must be up to snuff or they are shut down, fines and lost time.
The gooseneck plate on my truck is set up to general commercial truck standards. It is a steel plate bolted across the frame tied in at the sides of the frame with angle iron with grade 8 bolts to the frame and the plate on both sides. It is doubled in the middle so that the ball goes through 1-½ inches of steel with the nut welded on the bottom, and pinned. The only way the ball is coming off my frame is for the frame to come apart. The headstock of the trailer has an additional grade 8 bolt through the entire five inches and secured with an aircraft nut so that the hitch of the trailer cannot come loose. The breakaway battery is charged from the truck system and soon is getting a full sized battery in place of the gel cell.
I have some opinions of safety that will not impress many on this board, but they are from many miles of driving all sizes of truck and seeing the accidents, breakdowns, and near misses on the highway. First there needs to be some regulation of tag along trailers, which are inherently unsafe due to the design. Something like on any truck less than 26,000 gvwr, the trailer cannot be any heavier than the truck. The suburban with a 30-foot tag along behind it is the most dangerous thing on the road, in MHO. If a driver or truck does not feel safe at the speed limits and has to run slower, he has no business on the darn freeway. The safe speed limit is a flexible thing driven by the time and public acceptance. It used to be safe to run a rig at 80 in some areas, 75 in Tennessee. Then it was a serious safety violation to run over 55 for years. When actually 55 puts a driver to sleep and makes him much less alert.
Some of the RV type hitches and flip ups that are hauling heavy trailers scare the hell out of me. And then you see the cab and chassis that welds a 6-inch channel across the frame and sticks a ball on it and he is a trucker. I look at the dinky cost effective fifth wheel setups on many of the trucks and I really do not want to be around the darn truck on the highway. For safety reasons it should be illegal to run with a fifth wheel not locked from side movement. That is the purpose of a fifth wheel to make a flexible joint that does not sway. Ok turn them loose at the campground, but not on the highway. With them locked you don’t need six inches clearance to the bed rails either, two inches will do it.
Another commonly misunderstood item is brakes. If you don’t go over the axle weight rating of the vehicle, you have federally mandated brakes that will handle the weight of the vehicle. The truck brakes do not stop the trailer, the trailer brakes do. See the big difference of opinion here is the difference between commercial trucking and the occasional truck group. Like BBD said, I have never lost a trailer and know very well what I have for equipment and what to look for in weaknesses. If I should lose a trailer, I screwed up and I must handle the responsibility for not properly operating my truck. If a driver has doubt of his hookup, he needs to make it secure or stop running. It really scares me how many have reported losing or near losing a trailer, that is not acceptable. The safest way to go down the highway is with the flow of traffic, not slow so that everyone has to get around you. The proper spacing must be left between vehicles to stop in the event of an emergency stop with out running over the car in front of you. The more horsepower you have the safer you “can” drive by staying with the flow of traffic with less stress on hills and bad areas.
This thread was started over safety chains. If you have ever had to rely on them, you screwed up, not the truck, and corrective measures have to be taken. Tag alongs have to have them; a properly set up fifth wheel or gn does not need them and would probably kill you if they were stressed fully. Panic denotes that you will hit the brakes and have the hitch sitting on the console, not out the back. If your hitch setup needs safety chains, you need to fix it. It is unsafe. Can anything on your hitch break? If it can you need to fix it. If your gooseneck can possibly come off and pass you, you better get the weights set up right before it kills you and anyone else in its path. Tag along trailers float with a little positive hitch weight, a gooseneck is supposed to be a “semi” and have the proper percentage of weight on the hitch, and with this weight, coming unhooked, it will go down with a big bang and there is no control with or without safety chains. If that is not how your gooseneck works, loaded or empty, you have serious weight distribution problems to fix.
Except for losing a tanker on the ice, I have never had an accident with a combination vehicle. And when I flipped the tanker, the tractor stayed connected, I drove it home. I make sure my little truck is connected as strong as the big truck was.
03-08-2004, 03:37 PM
#65
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Used to be missoula, montana: Now in Sonoma County California
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Well said, I cant argue with any of that. I do agree on Tag alongs. Im even guilty of it as in this picture (something that shouldnt be done, i would have given a right nut for my Gooseneck that day), i also think that new regulations need to come into play concerning doubles, boats or cars behind goosenecks or the scarrier yet boats behind tag-alongs.
Im sorry but i do have to admit i used to pull doubles (licensed to do so) but i had a goose with sliding axles and the tag trailer that had ample brakes, stabilizers ect and i limited the types and balance of loads that went on it. Common sense, i never had much wiggle out of my setup and I would run 75+/- in Nevada at night but alot of these guys are all over the road and you know that the camper trailer axles dont have enough brakes to slow down that 3500+ lbs boat or car they are draging behind them.
My .02 but well said as always clearly thought out Haul in dixie, not enough can be said for always inspecting and double checking your equiptment. a simple walk around while fueling will ussually reveal new developing issues since your departure and full inspection
This is the Posterchild for what not to do, I actually to this day condemn what i did here that day, even though i scaled
Trailer is rated for 21000 lbs weighs 4k empty truck weighs 7200 rated for 9200. Im licensed for 38000 and i scaled 28430 in that picture. 17880 on the trailer axles 10550 on the truck axles roughly 1300 over on the drive axle.
What HaulinDixie says about lack of stabilizing weight is an arguement that should be explored this could have been disasterous, fatal had anything gone remotely wrong, between the length of the trailer and the size of the load all pivoting on a draw Ball, all laws of physics were against me.
Im sorry but i do have to admit i used to pull doubles (licensed to do so) but i had a goose with sliding axles and the tag trailer that had ample brakes, stabilizers ect and i limited the types and balance of loads that went on it. Common sense, i never had much wiggle out of my setup and I would run 75+/- in Nevada at night but alot of these guys are all over the road and you know that the camper trailer axles dont have enough brakes to slow down that 3500+ lbs boat or car they are draging behind them.
My .02 but well said as always clearly thought out Haul in dixie, not enough can be said for always inspecting and double checking your equiptment. a simple walk around while fueling will ussually reveal new developing issues since your departure and full inspection
This is the Posterchild for what not to do, I actually to this day condemn what i did here that day, even though i scaled
Trailer is rated for 21000 lbs weighs 4k empty truck weighs 7200 rated for 9200. Im licensed for 38000 and i scaled 28430 in that picture. 17880 on the trailer axles 10550 on the truck axles roughly 1300 over on the drive axle.
What HaulinDixie says about lack of stabilizing weight is an arguement that should be explored this could have been disasterous, fatal had anything gone remotely wrong, between the length of the trailer and the size of the load all pivoting on a draw Ball, all laws of physics were against me.
03-08-2004, 09:15 PM
#66
Guest
Posts: n/a
I agree with all that HID has stated except - 393.70. I drove without my safety chains all over Texas, La., OK, MS., AZ.,NM., and all the way to Calgary Canada........ went thru all the scales and points of entry and not one thing said. I have been DOT'ed at least 5 times the last several years and with no chains hooked up. there were no questions asked.
Different states, diffrent cops, different rules. I only started using my chains because of a County mounty DOT wanna be in refugio county TX. I figured it was better to make him happy than to listen to his bull cr@p.
Im gonna go by the TX DPS and talk to one of the officers and get his low down.
Get back with yall later.
BBD
Different states, diffrent cops, different rules. I only started using my chains because of a County mounty DOT wanna be in refugio county TX. I figured it was better to make him happy than to listen to his bull cr@p.
Im gonna go by the TX DPS and talk to one of the officers and get his low down.
Get back with yall later.
BBD
03-16-2004, 08:07 PM
#67
Guest
Posts: n/a
Originally posted by Haulin_in_Dixie
FMCSA does not specify but the way it is translated by DOT in any state is that if the hitch is a ball, as in gn or tag, it must have safety chains. If it is a king pin it needs no chains.
FMCSA does not specify but the way it is translated by DOT in any state is that if the hitch is a ball, as in gn or tag, it must have safety chains. If it is a king pin it needs no chains.
His exact words "they are not requied but if you have them go ahead and hook them up".
Ofcourse this is Texas - your state may vary.
03-16-2004, 08:41 PM
#68
Registered User
Thread Starter
BBD,
I bought a couple of solar chargers off Ebay. I'm waiting for delivery now. They were only 12 bucks, but I got hit with a shipping charge that was about the same. Hopefully they will do the job though.
Chris
I bought a couple of solar chargers off Ebay. I'm waiting for delivery now. They were only 12 bucks, but I got hit with a shipping charge that was about the same. Hopefully they will do the job though.
Chris
03-17-2004, 07:34 AM
#70
Thats MR Hoss to you buddy!
Originally posted by BigBlackDodge
His exact words "they are not requied but if you have them go ahead and hook them up".
His exact words "they are not requied but if you have them go ahead and hook them up".
03-18-2004, 09:55 AM
#74
BBD, you have proven repeatedly in this thread that you have no regard for the safety of the other people sharing the road with you.
You seem to think it is a funny matter, but if someone in your family is ever hurt by another individual with your contempt for public safety, you will find no humor in it.
They call safety chains "Safety" for a reason. Responsible individuals don't have to be told to do the right thing, they just do it because it is the right thing to do.
I hope you never learn this simple lesson the hard way.
You seem to think it is a funny matter, but if someone in your family is ever hurt by another individual with your contempt for public safety, you will find no humor in it.
They call safety chains "Safety" for a reason. Responsible individuals don't have to be told to do the right thing, they just do it because it is the right thing to do.
I hope you never learn this simple lesson the hard way.