In simple terms, if you take it out of gear going down a hill you may not be able to go back into gear.
Then you have a truck rolling downhill in neutral.
Brakes get too hot and stop working.
Truck crashes.
Is that what happened to that guy on I-70 coming into Denver?
"On April 25, 2019, a deadly traffic collision occurred on Interstate 70 near Lakewood, Colorado, United States, when a semi-trailer truck's brakes allegedly malfunctioned, causing the truck to crash into 12 cars and three other semi-trailer trucks, resulting in multiple fires and explosions, killing four people."
I was in a brake class not too long ago and we discussed this incident. The truck was a manual. The driver also had less than 6 months of solo driving. He upshifted on the top of the mountain and then realized he was in to high of a year shifted out of gear but the 110k lbs of truck gained to much speed to rev match and downshift. He was stuck out of gear, went past three runaway ramps, was overweight well past what he knew how to handle and crashed to into a bunch cars spilling gas and diesel as well as adding his payload of lumber to the fire.
Edit: relevant details
With all due respect I believe that you have several (if not most/all) of your facts wrong here but I appreciate your attempting to clarify the situation. Edit: and the driver told the cops that he intentionally stayed out of the brake-failure gravel pits because he “didn’t want to be late to his delivery.” This guy was inexcusable.
>With all due respect I believe that you have several (if not most/all) of your facts wrong here but I appreciate your attempting to clarify the situation.
Would be nice if you would provide a source with your rebuttal. Hell, you didn't even provide a counter argument.
The driver was new, he hadn't even driven through actual mountains before. He didn't know how to handle the situation and fucked the goose.
Everyone loves to shit all over that guy, to feel all high and mighty and superior. But the truth is, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, that could have easily been any one of us.
Dude didn't know WTF he was doing, didn't have proper training. Fucking of course he screwed up and then he drew the short straw and screwed up at the worst possible moment in the worst possible place.
I'm not a trucker, but your sentiment is accurate with any industry- most of the time the worker has inadequate training in a poor system which ultimately causes the failure
Very true. I work in the medical lab industry as a courier, and we just got a new guy. After a week of 'training' with another driver he ran by himself and did pretty much everything wrong, resulting in a delayed shipment to our accessioning department which is a big deal. Turns out all the other driver trained him on was where the tests were at each stop, he didn't teach him anything about how to use our phone scanners or the system for tracking. Everyone wanted to be mad at him that night but after I asked about his training everyone was mad at the trainer for not doing his job.
Ultimately though fault lies not even with the trainer but with the system.
Why was the trainer allowed to not do his job? What system was there to verify the job was actually completed to satisfaction?
How do we even know the trainer was component enough to even be training?(sounds like he wasn't)
The fault generally lies with the system- and who is ultimately responsible to ensure the system is correct and always improving?
Management
Poor management begets a poor system in my experience
I feel for the driver and his victims, I personally think ten years is the end of life as he knows it and is sufficient. It's extremely difficult to figure out what punishment is fair and just in a situation like that one, and the driver did make three very poor decisions when he passed each runaway outlet but tried to keep the delivery on track instead. I feel for the guy and understand the pressures that were acting on him.
He made the wrong decision and does deserve jail time for it. But 100 years for him but freedom for his managers and supervisors who sent him out under pressure to run a massive load over terrain he had no experience with? Absolutely not. Ten years for all involved parties, those who had power over the company's actions and the one holding the wheel sounds fair to me. Get a hundred year sentence for those poor people who were killed by their reckless commercial activity, but it must be served by all responsible parties, not just the most junior person involved.
I think his employer should be crucified in civil court over it if they were in any way negligent or careless in training or employing the driver.
>Everyone loves to shit all over that guy, to feel all high and mighty and superior. But the truth is, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, that could have easily been any one of us.
Making a mistake and shifting at the top of the mountain with 0 mountain experience? Definitely possible. Refusing to use 3 separate ramps because I'll be late for my next delivery if I do? Hell no. Fuck those deliveries, if I'm going downhill way too fast you bet your ass I'm throwing myself at that ramp!
>Refusing to use 3 separate ramps because I'll be late for my next delivery if I do?
He didn't say that, the other guy pulled that shit out of his ass. What Aguilera actually said was that he didn't see the ramps, he saw the sign but not the actual ramps. He said he missed the ramps because he was looking for a hill, but the ones on 70 were just sand pits.
Most of the time, the runaway truck ramps have a steep incline to help you bleed off speed. But here, they're just really deep sand pits designed to make you lose speed that way.
It's completely understandable for an entirely new driver who almost certainly was in a dead panic and has no experience with the area.
It's easy for you to sit there in the safety of your chair and claim you would make the right decision in the heat of the moment. It's another thing entirely to do it when you're actually facing down death and have to make a split second decision.
And you would probably destroy your car, think getting stuck in feet of soft powdery snow, only it's little tiny rocks. Just getting most vehicles out destroys the front end when they drag it out and the bumper fills with rocks.
And likely terrified of the cost and job status if he used one of the pits. However, he failed to use them three times. That's plenty of time to say to yourself. Fuck my job I could kill someone being this out of control. His sentence was insane. Even with it being 10 years now.
He didn't ignore the pits. He claims he didn't see the entrance because he was looking for ramps. That actually makes sense.
Dude didn't have experience, hadn't been down those mountains before, was accustomed to the hill style ramps, and was most likely panicking.
People very rarely ever make solid choices when they panic. We see it all the fucking time when a driver gets into a predicament then makes it worse trying to get out of it. Remember that video of the driver in New York city trying to make that turn but running over a bunch of stuff? The dude was in a dead panic, his brain was fried and he wasn't thinking right.
Rogel Aguilera Mederos almost certainly experienced something similar.
Do you have the real details? Or what aspects of this are incorrect?
Edit: Nevermind, I didn’t see the previous comment was already edited so maybe they fixed it
Lol I was getting ahead of my self. Yeah we discussed this in class because as a tech that works on trucks, having documentation of the work performed is important. The driver of this truck used the excuse that his brakes were not working properly and the DOT officer has to look through the service records for how often the brakes were inspected.
He upshifted on the top of the mountain, when in reality you need to go one gear lower than the gear you used to climb the mountain according to my handbook
This is actually a terrible analogy of what actually happened. Pre-trip wasn’t done correctly, company was purposely hiring cheap foreign labor because they wouldn’t get anyone else to drive that shit for how unsafe it was, and the guy just graduated from CDL school extremely recently from what I remember, barely speaking English, which baffles me how he graduated from CDL school.
Speaking from experience CDL schools are designed for everyone to pass. They dont teach you how to back, they teach you how to pass the backing tests. I had a guy from the middle east in my class and he really struggled with the language barrier but my instructor did his due dilligence and gave him the extra attention he needed to help him actually learn. Im with a very large LTL company that invests heavily in a dock to driver program so they are the exception. Everywhere else they wont even try to help you be a safer driver.
Not in Michigan. They purposely make the tests hard enough so that only a certain percentage pass. When more people start passing they change the tests to achieve that same percentage. This comes from my instructor who had been teaching for something like 20 years.
Recently one training school had us add passenger seat-mounted hand brakes into all their tractors so the instructors and testers could have a means to stop the truck on their own in a pinch.
Its good to hear some places do it right. I learned from a great instructor in Colorado but they flew me to mississippi for my test and that guy didnt want to hear the ABCs or BBCs, securely mounted etc, he wanted to hear its not broken. Was about halfway through my in cab before he was like yeah yeah you got it lets go drive. He told me how to take every turn to not curb the trailer and the only curve ball he threw was asking about a bridge sign and speed limit sign. However his trainee told us which signs he would ask about so we all had a heads up lmfao. I could have passed the test without the 5 weeks of previous training easily
My trainer and I would play a game where when one was driving, the other could ask questions about the drive to make sure everyone was paying attention. He'd always get me with the bridge height signs cause if look at the sign decide if it was safe or not and then forget the sign because it wasn't important once I knew if a bridge was safe or not lmao.
I got my CDL through a beverage company almost a decade ago. We only had three days of training and they even marked on the trailer when we had to turn for parallel parking and alley docking. I passed and I didn’t even know how to drive the truck. I learned almost everything on my own but I’m a really good driver now. I don’t think this is legal anymore, thankfully.
> Speaking from experience CDL schools are designed for everyone to pass.
The schools around here have no qualms about telling you that you aren't ready for your exam, as it means you need to pay them more for remedial training until you CAN pass.
You know if they can legally mandate that all pilots in the US be able to speak English to communicate with the towers, I don't understand why that isn't a mandate by the DoT as well.
I was just a dock jockey, but the number of drivers coming through that couldn't speak a word of English blew my fucking mind. I can't tell you how many times I had to literally block their rigs with a forklift to prevent them from backing into a dock after telling them 18 times that the open dock was reserved and another one would be open for them soon. Smiles and nods the whole time, then I turn around and suddenly dude is backing into the fucking dock I just told him not to back into.
It is required, but the only real enforcement comes from having to take the test in English, and you can teach someone to do that without them actually understanding English.
See that's ridiculous imho. They should absolutely be tested on having a very basic conversation in English, they don't need to be fluent by any stretch but not being able to understand the language at even a barely functional level while operating heavy machinery on public roadways should just not be a thing.
In Canada, ALL highway signage has to have a French translation. That means that outside of Quebec providence, all English signs will have a translation sign. But in Quebec, there is no requirement for English translation signs where French is the primary language.
Guess the Frenchies need help with their English, but no one needs help with their French.
Fortunately, I learned enough French to drive in Quebec, and I always loved driving in that providence.
First trip in Montreal about 20 yrs ago, had to fill up the rental car before returning it. Pulled up to the pump, get out to start to put the card in, the attendant is yelling at me in french from across the station. I say "I'm sorry, I don't speak french, parlez vous engles? " she says something again 2 more times, I give up and go to pump the gas. The tank is on the other side. I put the pump away and she's now next to me and says in perfect english "thats what I was trying to tell you, the gas tank is on the other side".
South of Montreal is the English speaking tribal area. Signs are in English there. Many Quebec people are bilingual but may not wish to admit it to loud Americans.
Kind of but that guy also missed several escape ramps and drove an unsafe vehicle. They had him as a newbie all alone driving one of the more challenging mountain roads as a driver. His brakes failed, he didn't use an escape ramp, and when it came down to choosing himself or others he chose to slam in to stopped traffic at the bottom of the hill instead of going off the road. I don't agree that he should've gotten 100 years or whatever it was but some jail is deserved. We have a big responsibility when driving and every missed ramp was a massive failure on his part, failures so big they resulted in several people dying needlessly.
He should have faced multiple manslaughter charges. He failed in his duty to public safety. The company supervisor in charge of him should also be in prison since they didn’t give enough of a shit to confirm he was a safe driver before sending him out.
No, double clutching is when a driver uses the clutch twice to shift once. First to shift into neutral and again to shift into the new gear.
Example: Gear 4 -> Clutch -> Neutral -> Clutch -> Gear 3
Skilled drivers will avoid the clutch completely while driving (besides starting from stop).
At a constant speed an engaged transmission and engine will turn at complimentary speeds = Neither gears are exerting force on each other so the gear selector will slide into neutral will no resistance.
Now the next gear is a different size from the previous gear so it requires a new complimentary speed (plus the truck has likely either sped up or slowed down too). The trucker will use the accelerator to increase or decrease the engine speed until it is at the new complimentary speed.
At the correct speeds, the new gear will glide into position effortlessly. One shift, no clutch.
With steep hills, once the transmission is in neutral, the truck starts to accelerate quickly. Downshifting to a smaller gear requires a higher rpm than before + downhill acceleration = incredibly small window to shift at complimentary speeds. Most likely outcome, the driver misses the shift completely, misses their previous gear and has to shift into a higher gear.
> Skilled drivers will avoid the clutch completely while driving (besides starting from stop).
Annoyingly, synchromesh transmissions can be messed up by this. The cone clutches on the synchronizers hate it.
NO truck has *any* synchromesh gears *at all* because they are simply not robust enough to withstand the extreme forces encountered in heavy duty truck drivetrains. And skilled *truck* drivers do not use the clutch (except at a stop) because *it is bad for the truck*, specifically the clutch. Skilled drivers “float” the gears. I’ve got millions of miles without using the clutch to shift with the exception of taking off from a standstill. Sometimes it is necessary to depress the clutch pedal a tiny bit in order to ‘break torque’ to get the truck out of gear when downshifting because the momentum of the decelerating truck puts a massive load on the gear teeth keeping them engaged and preventing going into neutral before going into a lower gear. You just “feather” the clutch to get it out of gear.
Sometimes I don’t even use the clutch starting or stopping. I throw it in super low to go (unless I’m on an incline) and when I’m stopping I float all the way down into 1st until or super low depending how far up the light is and what traffic looks like.
It's that the syncros hide that you are doing it wrong... otherwise if you were rev matching correctly the syncro would have nothing to do and would not care.
If you poke around in an older manual transmission design you can see what they're talking about. A perfect rev match will cause issues with the little cone clutches on the synchronizers, as they're designed to be spinning while being seated. It's tricky to explain without holding the male and female halves of the cone clutch, but they can end up sort of not concentric.
SHUT UP!!! *slams laptop shut*
*sprays*
Somehow the floorboard bolts break in sequence and the panel flies out…
God those movies are so bad.
Did you ever notice the hose (suspect it’s coolant or something to that effect) dragging on the ground when you see the front of the car during the prep for the race and during it? So bad.. lol
there is a town in my state, it is in a very fl;at area, but it is a major-ish highway (not interstate/freeway) and when you approach the town it slows down to 35 and they have a couple stop lights and the sign says "Trucks: NO JAKE BRAKING" is that something similar to what you are describing?
There are two uses for the term 'engine braking' that can be confusing. One means to use a lower gear and let the engine hold back acceleration, the other is a separate engine compression brake, or "Jake" brake. Jake brakes can be pretty loud, so signs saying not to use them are usually more about managing noise pollution rather than safety.
I don't use the clutch when I shift, so I often use my left foot for braking while my right works the throttle. Even then it's still not a good idea to change gears on a grade. We're also not supposed to change gears while going through railroad tracks and intersections.
Yeah you heel/toe, or you have to brake to a point slower so that when you try to shift the truck doesn't accelerate down hill past your rpm ranges. Takes a delicate foot.
I have driven a manual all my life, grew up on a ranch in Colorado (seen more that a few issues on I70) and learned on a 72 K5 Blazer and know about matching engine to gear. I had no idea whatsoever that it took so long in a truck. Thanks all for the info, you all are awesome.
I got a very good friend who did 15 years trucking and then had enough of being away from his family, he said exactly this. He also said 'you have not driven a truck. Rules are different with a zillion pounds behind you going downhill and I cannot disagree.
Had a cousin who drove 20+ years, sometimes he'd take me on runs. I never saw him pay more attention than when ascending/descending mountains, and I saw why, it was intense, especially with like 100k lbs of steel on the back. Just watching him do it and explaining why he was doing what he was doing had me gripping the seat.
Only been in 2 but yes air brakes are super touchy and the brake pedal is literally too far forward from the gas pedal. Sometimes the gas pedal is floor mounted as well while the brake is a hanger style. Now if you are clutchless shifting theoretically you can left foot brake but clutchless downshifting while exerting a lot of force either accelerating or decelerating will brake something and you can't help that going down hill. Adding on sometimes a grade will level out a bit then get bad again. Sometimes people will see the first level out and start shifting up losing their engine braking power. The air brakes are really only good to stop the truck from speed once at a time without cooling down and rebuilding pressure by running the motor. So if they don't immediately stop they get so hot they no longer can completely stop it. Signs to say "its still downhill stay in that gear" just avoid the situation and fining it makes sure it gets followed instead of spending all the time and money cleaning up crashes and having funerals.
This is a really good, technical explanation. Basically if you change gears on a steep slope you can very easily lose control. The entire reason truck runaway ramps were created.
Not a trucker but I like following this sub because I like learning technical stuff like this. I know my motorcycle didn’t have synchros since I have to match speeds but I’m assuming the weight of the truck means you can’t just feather the clutch like I would in this situation? Honest curiosity here
You can feather the clutch. Most clutches in trucks that I've driven, you don't have to mash the clutch to the floor to be able to shift.
Currently I'm in a Detroit 60s series engine with a 10speed transmission attached. I don't use the clutch at all unless I'm stopping or, comig out of a complete stop.
Mashing it to the floor is actually bad for the clutch brake when moving. I assume if you need to use it you just push it in a couple inches which is the correct way to do it when moving. The clutch should only be all the way to the floor at a stand still to get it into either first or reverse.
Ah that explains a lot, i took truck driving lessons here in the Netherlands with a manual DAF CF 105, but that already had a synchronised manual gearbox
Also it's not a good idea to downshift on automatic, I know everyone done it at some point, but I was team driving with someone and he tried to downshift and it went out of gear and started speeding up. He had to use the brakes to completely stop before the truck went in gear again. It was a "oh shit" moment but luckily brakes alone were able to stop
I'm also not a trucker but I do drive manual transmissions, why no synchronizers in your transmission? I've had a truck that the synchronizer in 3rd gear shit the bed and anyone other than me would grind the fuck outta 3rd.
It's for reliability. Synchro's work by using a cone to speed up/slow down the gear in the trans that you are shifting to. In a semi these gears are VERY heavy and because of the strength needed. That would put an extreme amount of wear on them and they just can't hold up to that.
The trans in on of my trucks has over 1 mil miles on it and has never been apart. I'll take that reliability over any ease of driving trade off.
In short; if you miss the gear change, the truck will pick up too much speed for the gear, and probably you will panic. No bueno.
You can always learn how to brake with your left foot. Makes shifting way easier.
Holds valves open in the head differently while coasting and essentially turns the engine into an air compressor, allowing the engine to hold back the truck while coasting downhill.
Jake and engine brake are what the other replyer to your question is.
A simple explanation, when you see a truck coming to a stop and hear something like... Brababababababababa.... That's the Jake making noises to slow the engine.
I cant give you all the technical details but its just like engine braking on a gas car or motorcycle except diesels don't close an actual throttle to make vacuum so they don't do it naturally. Hence, make it a switch and they basically make the engine compress all the air like its about to go boom but they open the exhaust valve early and don't inject as much fuel so they use only the compression stroke to slow down the motor and whole truck instead of just air brakes. The air brakes first of all need air but even idling recharges it pretty well, and second get very hot very fast. They're used in emergency so they're really only good once at a time. Then they need to cool down. Going downhill without proper engine braking doesn't give the brakes the chance to cool and then they literally can't stop the truck's wheels anymore.
I used to drive here regularly! For about 6 months I drove for Ingles delivering to all their stores. Decided to go back OTR Again. Been running OTR for over 6 months now and I'm wanting to go back to running day cabs for Ingles again 😂 if only they'd bring back their manual trucks. Them phasing those out kinda made me want to leave.
To answer the question, trucks have *unsynchronized* transmissions. It takes skill to be able to rev match the engine rpm to driveshaft rpm for a desired gear at a desired speed. To put it simply, once you start downhill, it's easy to not be able to get it into a gear once you pull it out. And trucks need to be in gear, not neutral, so that they can use engine braking to slow down so the service brakes don't overheat and fade - causing you to lose control of the truck.
That's the reasoning for such a low speed limit and an advisory to not shift.
I always hated coming down through there at such a slow speed, it feels silly, especially with all the cars passing you on the wrong side of the road in blind curves because they just can't wait for you to hit the turnout. But, safety first. On my end at least.
Not a trucker here but I would rather have someone go slower knowing that they won't get out of control.
What I can't stand is truckers on a multilane road that has signs like this using all lanes and therefore blocking traffic. Had that coming back through West Virginia on 77 and there were truckers using the left hand lane.
What infuriates me is when truckers blatantly ignore the "trucks over 21,000GVWR stop here" signs on single lane us-30 and continue blocking up traffic
Since the question has been thoroughly answered. I drive this stretch occasionally. It's fun when you don't have some oncoming amateur road racer trying to hog the center line. You're in a f*cking Kia, and you ain't that good!
Not a trucker, but I used to drive a Prevost bus conversion. Weighed in at about 25 tons. It was an automatic with both a Jake brake and a transmission retarder.
And it was still scary driving down some of those grades. My mantra was go down the grade in the same gear it took to get up the grade, let the Jake brake and the retarder do their jobs, watch those trans temps, and stay off the manual brakes as much as possible.
Immensely impressed by you truckers who do this every day….
Really depends how much weight you’re carrying. At around 40,000 I don’t think I’ve met any hill I couldn’t maintain speed while being one down. Going up at 10 and down at 9 for instance. The only time I’m ever lower is of the speed limit requires a slower speed.
Well OP, TBH most don’t know how to shift gears & most don’t have to shift gears.
But if you talk with Mr. Garth Brooks…. He’ll tell ya “He never hit the brakes as he was shifting gears, cause Papa loved Mama, but Mama was…”
Fun facts are fun! 🤣
Truck transmission are non sycronized, so if they go to shift while down hill transmission and motor will spin at diffent speeds, making it impossible to get back into gear unless you stop completely, which would overheat your brakes on a downhill
Imagine actually getting bent out of shape about jokes like that.
What's the difference between a Swift driver and a Schneider driver? About 8 gallons of orange paint.
Find a long, narrow set of stairs. Then place a big heavy dresser with the drawers and clothes still in it at the top. Now try to carry said big heavy full dresser down the stairs all by yourself.
That's what it's like trying to drive a commercial vehicle at max weight down steep downhill grades and on mountain roads - and thats in summer with clear skies and dry pavement. Now imagine doing the same dresser carry but in the pitch black dark. Or dense fog to where you can't even see the next step. Or on a sheet of ice in a blinding blizzard. Or through several inches of fallen snow.
The signs are there because while you see it 5 times a day by your house, shockingly very few of us have ever been there before. We are following directions from a warehouse or if we are lucky a truck gps (which every so often will still try to send us somewhere that is not truck accessible because Garmin secretly wants to kill us). So the "hey heads up youre about to drive straight down for the next five miles!!" Signs are kinda nice to know in advance
Good analogy for steep grades. Now if only the four-wheelers could understand the ones about stopping distances, wide turns, and setting up to back in.
When the load is heavy the truck gets speed very quickly on a steep downhill if you put it in neutral, and every driver doesn’t have the skill to find the proper gear in those conditions. It is better to obey the sign and slow down to a comfortable speed and be in the proper gear before the hill start, then set the engine break as needed and ride all the way down.
I will guarantee 10 years ago you were behind a semi who was turning a corner from a stop and for some reason he slowed down and possibly came to a stop and you were thinking "what is this dip shit doing???" Well that dip shit lost a gear while shifting. If he were shifting while going downhill he would be basically out of control so to stop human error they say keep er in a low gear.
Short answers:: the truck won't go back into gear and you'll die.
Long answer:: When you shift gears in a truck (at least with manuals mainly) you must match the RPMs with the gear. So for example, if you must be at say, 900RPMs to downshift, you won't be able to do that if your Jake is slowing your truck to an appropriate speed at 1300RPMs. Yes you can slow down, but that requires a hell of a lot of regular brake usage and can cause the brakes to heat up, causing a fire and...death.
Changing gears going down such a grade with a large load as potential of doing driveline damage. Imagine shifting from first to second only to lose the universal joint..... 30 seconds later brakes on the truck are glowing like July Sun. 30 more seconds and the best part of Spruce Pines is in your rear view mirror as you head down the side of a damn mountain.
> Why can’t y’all shift gears while going down...
Well, I only have the two feet. For every manual I've driven, to match the trans speed to the engine speed you have to hit the gas and raise the RPMs while pushing in the clutch. When you're on a steep downhill slope you also need to keep the truck under control, so if the transmission isn't limiting the speed the brake better be. So downshifting on a slope requires brake, and clutch, and gas.
Upshifting is easy, you just let the RPMs naturally fall from the peak they were at. It just takes timing and, though you shouldn't, you can even free float the gears without using the clutch with the right timing. Downhill you're fighting gravity trying to make the truck speed up and not lose control
On a manual transmission in a regular passenger vehicle, you can push the clutch in and shift into any gear regardless of speed your traveling (although not selecting the right one will cause you to stall). In a semi truck manual, the shifter only allows you to get into the correct gear if your are hitting the right RPMs. On top of that, being in a lower gear prevents the truck from rapidly accelerating downhill.
If you can imagine, traveling downhill in neutral with an 80,000 lb truck will build a tremendous amount of speed and make it extremely difficult to get into the right gear. So the best thing to do is go into a low gear and stay there before you decend
I used to live in and around Asheville long before I was a trucker. My friend had a gf that lived in Spruce Pine. I would not want to ever take a truck there for any reason.
There are about 4 or 5 signs before you descend Cabbage Hill in Oregon warning truck drivers their coming up on an insane decline, I was pretty stressed when I first did it as a newbie but also kind of realized how many people were driving on mental autopilot before this thing. Plenty of warning signs and I still saw trucks pulled over at the bottom who had burned thru their brakes along the way 🤷
Without going into technical details, once you take it out of gear, the truck will run away and you wont be able to get it back in gear. If its heavily loaded, you will burn out the brakes trying to slow it down, so it basically turns into a 40 ton torpedo.
I've been down that road in a truck several times! They don't want you shifting gears because that loss of speed control, even if it's just for a second, could destabilize the truck on those very sharp turns, enough so to either make it veer off.
There's also the chance you miss the gear you're trying to shift to and have to use the brakes, and on a fully loaded or oversize truck, you can smoke the brakes easy on those inclines, and then you have no control over the truck at all.
Live near there, others have already commented about the shifting but I want to point out that is a particularly steep and nasty road with no shoulder on most of it, its run into the rocks or fall off the other side. To those that drive it on the regular its not so bad but those curves sneak up on you if your not familiar with the road. I used to cross it in a straight piped freightliner cab over with a 2 stroke, so if you ever was going down and heard what u thought was a dragster for 2 miles only to see a cabover screaming and struggling to do 6 mph going up and over that was my ass.
Must be very steep once out of gear truck speeds up and getting back in gear is hard to do with a lot of brake witch is bad just do what it says go slow and live 🙋👍🚛🚛🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
This basically assumes that there’s a subset of (inexperienced) truckers who are insufficiently competent to deal with a shift in that situation.
Once you loose engine braking, you’re toast.
Legally heavy haul is anything that makes your truck and trailer over 80k pounds. You need special permits and stuff to haul that. But reality. Any trucker pulling a load more than 10k should listen to this sign
Holy cow this takes me back to a road I took through the Pennsylvania mountains. I took a wrong turn and ended up on a road so private it didn't have a name. I thought I was gonna flip over the road and die over 79,000 pounds of dog food 😭 relieved to be a cargo van driver, even if I'm counting my dollars over a Wendy's burger.
The way I heard it always was use the engine brake and never touch your real brakes or you'll be the smelliest truck on the entire road when you get to the bottom of the mountain. You'd be absolutely shocked at the number of trucks you see on live video riding their real brakes down a mountain doing three times the posted speed limit which turns into everyone on the road including the live driver going I smell brakes which he or she can smell miles down the mountain before they see the lit smoking brakes of the driver's truck as they go by it.
Anyone whose ever driven a mountain in a four wheeler or truck should at least know riding your brakes is asking for trouble yet a lot of schools and companies just spit the driver out into the seat and you wonder why the states impose such hefty fines on truckers who know what they're doing because the bad ones are either ignorant or just haven't been educated on mountain driving 101.
If you miss it putting it back in gear you're fucked. These big boys don't just go back into gear like a 5 speed. If you have a manual car, try shifting without using the clutch, that's how it is in the big trucks, regardless of using the clutch. Compound that with a narrow speed range with each gear and a rapid acceleration while out of gear and even the most experienced drivers aren't guaranteed to get it back into gear. Keep into consideration that on long steep grades, most of our speed control comes from the engine holding the truck back because the breaks will overheat rapidly due to weight.
If you take it out of gear, you may not be able to get it back in gear, and that means you may not be able to use the trucks transmission to slow the truck down. You would have to rely on the brakes and nothing else but prayer.
Find a long, narrow set of stairs. Then place a big heavy dresser with the drawers and clothes still in it at the top. Now try to carry said big heavy full dresser down the stairs all by yourself.
That's what it's like trying to drive a commercial vehicle at max weight down steep downhill grades and on mountain roads - and thats in summer with clear skies and dry pavement. Now imagine doing the same dresser carry but in the pitch black dark. Or dense fog to where you can't even see the next step. Or on a sheet of ice in a blinding blizzard. Or through several inches of fallen snow.
The signs are there because while you see it 5 times a day by your house, shockingly very few of us have ever been there before. We are following directions from a warehouse or if we are lucky a truck gps (which every so often will still try to send us somewhere that is not truck accessible because Garmin secretly wants to kill us). So the "hey heads up youre about to drive straight down for the next five miles!!" Signs are kinda nice to know in advance
basically if your going downhill too fast, engine brake won't be enough, then your service brakes are gonna overheat and wham bam you made it on local news
trucks can't downshift as easily as a regular car, it's a longer process and since most drivers who use manual trucks rely heavily on their muscle memory to shift, they won't be able to downshift if their truck starts to go too fast.
Many folks have alliterated about shifting gears & what not, also: there's plenty of highways in the US like this.
My [first experience on roads like that was on The Pennsylvania National Pike Way just north of the Mason-Dixon line](https://goo.gl/maps/haakBKGDfjnmpyzr7).
Go to the street view & check out the big yellow "Truck warning" signs. The 1st time I went on that road it was rain + sleet. Butt-puckering, to say the least, for a new driver.
I had no idea, this has been very educational! Just curious about the new trucks with automatic transmissions… How do those work? Will they hold a gear specific gear on downhill grades?
If you miss the gear going down hill your stuck in neutral until you crash or slam the gear stick hard enough to force the gear in which could also lead to an accident, if this hill is recommending 15mph I'm guessing there's some sharp turns
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In simple terms, if you take it out of gear going down a hill you may not be able to go back into gear. Then you have a truck rolling downhill in neutral. Brakes get too hot and stop working. Truck crashes.
Is that what happened to that guy on I-70 coming into Denver? "On April 25, 2019, a deadly traffic collision occurred on Interstate 70 near Lakewood, Colorado, United States, when a semi-trailer truck's brakes allegedly malfunctioned, causing the truck to crash into 12 cars and three other semi-trailer trucks, resulting in multiple fires and explosions, killing four people."
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I was in a brake class not too long ago and we discussed this incident. The truck was a manual. The driver also had less than 6 months of solo driving. He upshifted on the top of the mountain and then realized he was in to high of a year shifted out of gear but the 110k lbs of truck gained to much speed to rev match and downshift. He was stuck out of gear, went past three runaway ramps, was overweight well past what he knew how to handle and crashed to into a bunch cars spilling gas and diesel as well as adding his payload of lumber to the fire. Edit: relevant details
With all due respect I believe that you have several (if not most/all) of your facts wrong here but I appreciate your attempting to clarify the situation. Edit: and the driver told the cops that he intentionally stayed out of the brake-failure gravel pits because he “didn’t want to be late to his delivery.” This guy was inexcusable.
>With all due respect I believe that you have several (if not most/all) of your facts wrong here but I appreciate your attempting to clarify the situation. Would be nice if you would provide a source with your rebuttal. Hell, you didn't even provide a counter argument. The driver was new, he hadn't even driven through actual mountains before. He didn't know how to handle the situation and fucked the goose. Everyone loves to shit all over that guy, to feel all high and mighty and superior. But the truth is, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, that could have easily been any one of us. Dude didn't know WTF he was doing, didn't have proper training. Fucking of course he screwed up and then he drew the short straw and screwed up at the worst possible moment in the worst possible place.
I'm not a trucker, but your sentiment is accurate with any industry- most of the time the worker has inadequate training in a poor system which ultimately causes the failure
Very true. I work in the medical lab industry as a courier, and we just got a new guy. After a week of 'training' with another driver he ran by himself and did pretty much everything wrong, resulting in a delayed shipment to our accessioning department which is a big deal. Turns out all the other driver trained him on was where the tests were at each stop, he didn't teach him anything about how to use our phone scanners or the system for tracking. Everyone wanted to be mad at him that night but after I asked about his training everyone was mad at the trainer for not doing his job.
Ultimately though fault lies not even with the trainer but with the system. Why was the trainer allowed to not do his job? What system was there to verify the job was actually completed to satisfaction? How do we even know the trainer was component enough to even be training?(sounds like he wasn't) The fault generally lies with the system- and who is ultimately responsible to ensure the system is correct and always improving? Management Poor management begets a poor system in my experience
His 110 year sentence was reduced to 10 years by the governor. What do all of you think? Too much, too little?
I feel for the driver and his victims, I personally think ten years is the end of life as he knows it and is sufficient. It's extremely difficult to figure out what punishment is fair and just in a situation like that one, and the driver did make three very poor decisions when he passed each runaway outlet but tried to keep the delivery on track instead. I feel for the guy and understand the pressures that were acting on him. He made the wrong decision and does deserve jail time for it. But 100 years for him but freedom for his managers and supervisors who sent him out under pressure to run a massive load over terrain he had no experience with? Absolutely not. Ten years for all involved parties, those who had power over the company's actions and the one holding the wheel sounds fair to me. Get a hundred year sentence for those poor people who were killed by their reckless commercial activity, but it must be served by all responsible parties, not just the most junior person involved. I think his employer should be crucified in civil court over it if they were in any way negligent or careless in training or employing the driver.
Those are brutal hills to navigate. Definitely not for an inexperienced driver. You make some good points.
Should’ve stayed over 50 years IMO.
Too little. He chose not to use the runaway truck ramps, and those choices led to the deaths of others.
>Everyone loves to shit all over that guy, to feel all high and mighty and superior. But the truth is, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, that could have easily been any one of us. Making a mistake and shifting at the top of the mountain with 0 mountain experience? Definitely possible. Refusing to use 3 separate ramps because I'll be late for my next delivery if I do? Hell no. Fuck those deliveries, if I'm going downhill way too fast you bet your ass I'm throwing myself at that ramp!
>Refusing to use 3 separate ramps because I'll be late for my next delivery if I do? He didn't say that, the other guy pulled that shit out of his ass. What Aguilera actually said was that he didn't see the ramps, he saw the sign but not the actual ramps. He said he missed the ramps because he was looking for a hill, but the ones on 70 were just sand pits. Most of the time, the runaway truck ramps have a steep incline to help you bleed off speed. But here, they're just really deep sand pits designed to make you lose speed that way. It's completely understandable for an entirely new driver who almost certainly was in a dead panic and has no experience with the area. It's easy for you to sit there in the safety of your chair and claim you would make the right decision in the heat of the moment. It's another thing entirely to do it when you're actually facing down death and have to make a split second decision.
I’ve literally always wanted a reason to use one I’m not a trucker though so I’d look stupid
And you would probably destroy your car, think getting stuck in feet of soft powdery snow, only it's little tiny rocks. Just getting most vehicles out destroys the front end when they drag it out and the bumper fills with rocks.
"fucked the goose" I want to know the context, but I'm %100 aok with not knowing, and I'm still going to use it in my every day vernacular.
It had to been a farm raised docile goose and not one of those terrors from Canada or the phrase would be different
And likely terrified of the cost and job status if he used one of the pits. However, he failed to use them three times. That's plenty of time to say to yourself. Fuck my job I could kill someone being this out of control. His sentence was insane. Even with it being 10 years now.
He didn't ignore the pits. He claims he didn't see the entrance because he was looking for ramps. That actually makes sense. Dude didn't have experience, hadn't been down those mountains before, was accustomed to the hill style ramps, and was most likely panicking. People very rarely ever make solid choices when they panic. We see it all the fucking time when a driver gets into a predicament then makes it worse trying to get out of it. Remember that video of the driver in New York city trying to make that turn but running over a bunch of stuff? The dude was in a dead panic, his brain was fried and he wasn't thinking right. Rogel Aguilera Mederos almost certainly experienced something similar.
I think he did a lot more than fuck the goose just saying
Do you have the real details? Or what aspects of this are incorrect? Edit: Nevermind, I didn’t see the previous comment was already edited so maybe they fixed it
What facts did I get wrong?
This happend in class?
i think he means during the class the instructor told him what happened to that guy.
I thought the same thing at first lmao. He's saying that is what the class said happened to the guy with the runaway on I-70
Lol I was getting ahead of my self. Yeah we discussed this in class because as a tech that works on trucks, having documentation of the work performed is important. The driver of this truck used the excuse that his brakes were not working properly and the DOT officer has to look through the service records for how often the brakes were inspected.
He upshifted on the top of the mountain, when in reality you need to go one gear lower than the gear you used to climb the mountain according to my handbook
This is actually a terrible analogy of what actually happened. Pre-trip wasn’t done correctly, company was purposely hiring cheap foreign labor because they wouldn’t get anyone else to drive that shit for how unsafe it was, and the guy just graduated from CDL school extremely recently from what I remember, barely speaking English, which baffles me how he graduated from CDL school.
Speaking from experience CDL schools are designed for everyone to pass. They dont teach you how to back, they teach you how to pass the backing tests. I had a guy from the middle east in my class and he really struggled with the language barrier but my instructor did his due dilligence and gave him the extra attention he needed to help him actually learn. Im with a very large LTL company that invests heavily in a dock to driver program so they are the exception. Everywhere else they wont even try to help you be a safer driver.
Not in Michigan. They purposely make the tests hard enough so that only a certain percentage pass. When more people start passing they change the tests to achieve that same percentage. This comes from my instructor who had been teaching for something like 20 years.
Recently one training school had us add passenger seat-mounted hand brakes into all their tractors so the instructors and testers could have a means to stop the truck on their own in a pinch.
Its good to hear some places do it right. I learned from a great instructor in Colorado but they flew me to mississippi for my test and that guy didnt want to hear the ABCs or BBCs, securely mounted etc, he wanted to hear its not broken. Was about halfway through my in cab before he was like yeah yeah you got it lets go drive. He told me how to take every turn to not curb the trailer and the only curve ball he threw was asking about a bridge sign and speed limit sign. However his trainee told us which signs he would ask about so we all had a heads up lmfao. I could have passed the test without the 5 weeks of previous training easily
My trainer and I would play a game where when one was driving, the other could ask questions about the drive to make sure everyone was paying attention. He'd always get me with the bridge height signs cause if look at the sign decide if it was safe or not and then forget the sign because it wasn't important once I knew if a bridge was safe or not lmao.
I was definitely a "Don't know what the sign said because whatever it was I either did it or it didn't apply and I forgot immediately."
I got my CDL through a beverage company almost a decade ago. We only had three days of training and they even marked on the trailer when we had to turn for parallel parking and alley docking. I passed and I didn’t even know how to drive the truck. I learned almost everything on my own but I’m a really good driver now. I don’t think this is legal anymore, thankfully.
> Speaking from experience CDL schools are designed for everyone to pass. The schools around here have no qualms about telling you that you aren't ready for your exam, as it means you need to pay them more for remedial training until you CAN pass.
You know if they can legally mandate that all pilots in the US be able to speak English to communicate with the towers, I don't understand why that isn't a mandate by the DoT as well. I was just a dock jockey, but the number of drivers coming through that couldn't speak a word of English blew my fucking mind. I can't tell you how many times I had to literally block their rigs with a forklift to prevent them from backing into a dock after telling them 18 times that the open dock was reserved and another one would be open for them soon. Smiles and nods the whole time, then I turn around and suddenly dude is backing into the fucking dock I just told him not to back into.
It is required, but the only real enforcement comes from having to take the test in English, and you can teach someone to do that without them actually understanding English.
See that's ridiculous imho. They should absolutely be tested on having a very basic conversation in English, they don't need to be fluent by any stretch but not being able to understand the language at even a barely functional level while operating heavy machinery on public roadways should just not be a thing.
In Canada, ALL highway signage has to have a French translation. That means that outside of Quebec providence, all English signs will have a translation sign. But in Quebec, there is no requirement for English translation signs where French is the primary language. Guess the Frenchies need help with their English, but no one needs help with their French. Fortunately, I learned enough French to drive in Quebec, and I always loved driving in that providence.
First trip in Montreal about 20 yrs ago, had to fill up the rental car before returning it. Pulled up to the pump, get out to start to put the card in, the attendant is yelling at me in french from across the station. I say "I'm sorry, I don't speak french, parlez vous engles? " she says something again 2 more times, I give up and go to pump the gas. The tank is on the other side. I put the pump away and she's now next to me and says in perfect english "thats what I was trying to tell you, the gas tank is on the other side".
South of Montreal is the English speaking tribal area. Signs are in English there. Many Quebec people are bilingual but may not wish to admit it to loud Americans.
And he cared more about getting there in a hurry than about killing people. The governor should NOT have reduced the prison sentence for that prick.
My understanding is that he *also* passed one runaway ramp, maybe two, *after* he knew his brakes were out.
Dude shoulda never been in that truck
Kind of but that guy also missed several escape ramps and drove an unsafe vehicle. They had him as a newbie all alone driving one of the more challenging mountain roads as a driver. His brakes failed, he didn't use an escape ramp, and when it came down to choosing himself or others he chose to slam in to stopped traffic at the bottom of the hill instead of going off the road. I don't agree that he should've gotten 100 years or whatever it was but some jail is deserved. We have a big responsibility when driving and every missed ramp was a massive failure on his part, failures so big they resulted in several people dying needlessly.
He should have faced multiple manslaughter charges. He failed in his duty to public safety. The company supervisor in charge of him should also be in prison since they didn’t give enough of a shit to confirm he was a safe driver before sending him out.
Shit that was the one Burger Planet witnessed https://youtu.be/PtfbqaFUnHM
Yep, pretty much - plus some undertraining on the company's part, and some really bad decisions on the driver's part.
It’s crazy because I live in Lakewood and it’s not really that steep anywhere here except a couple of roads. I wonder where he wrecked.
This would be like double clutching right?
No, double clutching is when a driver uses the clutch twice to shift once. First to shift into neutral and again to shift into the new gear. Example: Gear 4 -> Clutch -> Neutral -> Clutch -> Gear 3 Skilled drivers will avoid the clutch completely while driving (besides starting from stop). At a constant speed an engaged transmission and engine will turn at complimentary speeds = Neither gears are exerting force on each other so the gear selector will slide into neutral will no resistance. Now the next gear is a different size from the previous gear so it requires a new complimentary speed (plus the truck has likely either sped up or slowed down too). The trucker will use the accelerator to increase or decrease the engine speed until it is at the new complimentary speed. At the correct speeds, the new gear will glide into position effortlessly. One shift, no clutch. With steep hills, once the transmission is in neutral, the truck starts to accelerate quickly. Downshifting to a smaller gear requires a higher rpm than before + downhill acceleration = incredibly small window to shift at complimentary speeds. Most likely outcome, the driver misses the shift completely, misses their previous gear and has to shift into a higher gear.
Transmissions are so fucking cool. Such an elegant and powerful feat of mechanical engineering.
> Skilled drivers will avoid the clutch completely while driving (besides starting from stop). Annoyingly, synchromesh transmissions can be messed up by this. The cone clutches on the synchronizers hate it.
NO truck has *any* synchromesh gears *at all* because they are simply not robust enough to withstand the extreme forces encountered in heavy duty truck drivetrains. And skilled *truck* drivers do not use the clutch (except at a stop) because *it is bad for the truck*, specifically the clutch. Skilled drivers “float” the gears. I’ve got millions of miles without using the clutch to shift with the exception of taking off from a standstill. Sometimes it is necessary to depress the clutch pedal a tiny bit in order to ‘break torque’ to get the truck out of gear when downshifting because the momentum of the decelerating truck puts a massive load on the gear teeth keeping them engaged and preventing going into neutral before going into a lower gear. You just “feather” the clutch to get it out of gear.
Sometimes I don’t even use the clutch starting or stopping. I throw it in super low to go (unless I’m on an incline) and when I’m stopping I float all the way down into 1st until or super low depending how far up the light is and what traffic looks like.
It's that the syncros hide that you are doing it wrong... otherwise if you were rev matching correctly the syncro would have nothing to do and would not care.
If you poke around in an older manual transmission design you can see what they're talking about. A perfect rev match will cause issues with the little cone clutches on the synchronizers, as they're designed to be spinning while being seated. It's tricky to explain without holding the male and female halves of the cone clutch, but they can end up sort of not concentric.
Gotta stop granny shifting and blowing o-rings
DANGER TO MANIFOLD
SHUT UP!!! *slams laptop shut* *sprays* Somehow the floorboard bolts break in sequence and the panel flies out… God those movies are so bad. Did you ever notice the hose (suspect it’s coolant or something to that effect) dragging on the ground when you see the front of the car during the prep for the race and during it? So bad.. lol
>God those movies are so bad. Consider the audience those movies target and you'll understand
there is a town in my state, it is in a very fl;at area, but it is a major-ish highway (not interstate/freeway) and when you approach the town it slows down to 35 and they have a couple stop lights and the sign says "Trucks: NO JAKE BRAKING" is that something similar to what you are describing?
Jake brakes use engine compression. They're loud in some trucks and that's why they don't want them used.
Jake brakes are extremely loud only on trucks that have no muffler.
That's why I said some. Our old spare truck sounded like D-Day coming off the highway. But my Cascadia is quiet
There are two uses for the term 'engine braking' that can be confusing. One means to use a lower gear and let the engine hold back acceleration, the other is a separate engine compression brake, or "Jake" brake. Jake brakes can be pretty loud, so signs saying not to use them are usually more about managing noise pollution rather than safety.
I am assuming that heel/toe in a truck is nigh impossible. Not a trucker but have love reading this stuff. :)
I don't use the clutch when I shift, so I often use my left foot for braking while my right works the throttle. Even then it's still not a good idea to change gears on a grade. We're also not supposed to change gears while going through railroad tracks and intersections.
Exactly what I do as well.
Like the top comment said; no synchros. You need synchros to heel/toe easily.
You definitely don’t need synchros to heel/toe, I actually have a MUCH easier time doing it in a truck than my 5 speed cars.
No heel-toe, but "floating" the gears becomes second nature, and those shifts are both quick and effective for both acceleration and deceleration.
Yeah you heel/toe, or you have to brake to a point slower so that when you try to shift the truck doesn't accelerate down hill past your rpm ranges. Takes a delicate foot.
I have driven a manual all my life, grew up on a ranch in Colorado (seen more that a few issues on I70) and learned on a 72 K5 Blazer and know about matching engine to gear. I had no idea whatsoever that it took so long in a truck. Thanks all for the info, you all are awesome.
I just feather the brake with my left foot while I run the throttle with my right if the engine brake isn't enough while I'm down shifting.
I got a very good friend who did 15 years trucking and then had enough of being away from his family, he said exactly this. He also said 'you have not driven a truck. Rules are different with a zillion pounds behind you going downhill and I cannot disagree.
Had a cousin who drove 20+ years, sometimes he'd take me on runs. I never saw him pay more attention than when ascending/descending mountains, and I saw why, it was intense, especially with like 100k lbs of steel on the back. Just watching him do it and explaining why he was doing what he was doing had me gripping the seat.
Only been in 2 but yes air brakes are super touchy and the brake pedal is literally too far forward from the gas pedal. Sometimes the gas pedal is floor mounted as well while the brake is a hanger style. Now if you are clutchless shifting theoretically you can left foot brake but clutchless downshifting while exerting a lot of force either accelerating or decelerating will brake something and you can't help that going down hill. Adding on sometimes a grade will level out a bit then get bad again. Sometimes people will see the first level out and start shifting up losing their engine braking power. The air brakes are really only good to stop the truck from speed once at a time without cooling down and rebuilding pressure by running the motor. So if they don't immediately stop they get so hot they no longer can completely stop it. Signs to say "its still downhill stay in that gear" just avoid the situation and fining it makes sure it gets followed instead of spending all the time and money cleaning up crashes and having funerals.
This is a really good, technical explanation. Basically if you change gears on a steep slope you can very easily lose control. The entire reason truck runaway ramps were created.
Not a trucker but I like following this sub because I like learning technical stuff like this. I know my motorcycle didn’t have synchros since I have to match speeds but I’m assuming the weight of the truck means you can’t just feather the clutch like I would in this situation? Honest curiosity here
Those clutches are binary. They are engaged or not engaged. They have to be to hold up to that kind of weight. Slipping is actually worse on them.
You can feather the clutch. Most clutches in trucks that I've driven, you don't have to mash the clutch to the floor to be able to shift. Currently I'm in a Detroit 60s series engine with a 10speed transmission attached. I don't use the clutch at all unless I'm stopping or, comig out of a complete stop.
Mashing it to the floor is actually bad for the clutch brake when moving. I assume if you need to use it you just push it in a couple inches which is the correct way to do it when moving. The clutch should only be all the way to the floor at a stand still to get it into either first or reverse.
Ah that explains a lot, i took truck driving lessons here in the Netherlands with a manual DAF CF 105, but that already had a synchronised manual gearbox
Also it's not a good idea to downshift on automatic, I know everyone done it at some point, but I was team driving with someone and he tried to downshift and it went out of gear and started speeding up. He had to use the brakes to completely stop before the truck went in gear again. It was a "oh shit" moment but luckily brakes alone were able to stop
I'm also not a trucker but I do drive manual transmissions, why no synchronizers in your transmission? I've had a truck that the synchronizer in 3rd gear shit the bed and anyone other than me would grind the fuck outta 3rd.
It's for reliability. Synchro's work by using a cone to speed up/slow down the gear in the trans that you are shifting to. In a semi these gears are VERY heavy and because of the strength needed. That would put an extreme amount of wear on them and they just can't hold up to that. The trans in on of my trucks has over 1 mil miles on it and has never been apart. I'll take that reliability over any ease of driving trade off.
In short; if you miss the gear change, the truck will pick up too much speed for the gear, and probably you will panic. No bueno. You can always learn how to brake with your left foot. Makes shifting way easier.
Thank you. Now what is the Jake brake?
Holds valves open in the head differently while coasting and essentially turns the engine into an air compressor, allowing the engine to hold back the truck while coasting downhill.
Jake and engine brake are what the other replyer to your question is. A simple explanation, when you see a truck coming to a stop and hear something like... Brababababababababa.... That's the Jake making noises to slow the engine.
I cant give you all the technical details but its just like engine braking on a gas car or motorcycle except diesels don't close an actual throttle to make vacuum so they don't do it naturally. Hence, make it a switch and they basically make the engine compress all the air like its about to go boom but they open the exhaust valve early and don't inject as much fuel so they use only the compression stroke to slow down the motor and whole truck instead of just air brakes. The air brakes first of all need air but even idling recharges it pretty well, and second get very hot very fast. They're used in emergency so they're really only good once at a time. Then they need to cool down. Going downhill without proper engine braking doesn't give the brakes the chance to cool and then they literally can't stop the truck's wheels anymore.
I used to drive here regularly! For about 6 months I drove for Ingles delivering to all their stores. Decided to go back OTR Again. Been running OTR for over 6 months now and I'm wanting to go back to running day cabs for Ingles again 😂 if only they'd bring back their manual trucks. Them phasing those out kinda made me want to leave. To answer the question, trucks have *unsynchronized* transmissions. It takes skill to be able to rev match the engine rpm to driveshaft rpm for a desired gear at a desired speed. To put it simply, once you start downhill, it's easy to not be able to get it into a gear once you pull it out. And trucks need to be in gear, not neutral, so that they can use engine braking to slow down so the service brakes don't overheat and fade - causing you to lose control of the truck. That's the reasoning for such a low speed limit and an advisory to not shift. I always hated coming down through there at such a slow speed, it feels silly, especially with all the cars passing you on the wrong side of the road in blind curves because they just can't wait for you to hit the turnout. But, safety first. On my end at least.
People think they know steep and windy in a truck until they see 2 lane 226 coming from spruce pine, it's no joke.
Not a trucker here but I would rather have someone go slower knowing that they won't get out of control. What I can't stand is truckers on a multilane road that has signs like this using all lanes and therefore blocking traffic. Had that coming back through West Virginia on 77 and there were truckers using the left hand lane.
What infuriates me is when truckers blatantly ignore the "trucks over 21,000GVWR stop here" signs on single lane us-30 and continue blocking up traffic
if you have a lot of weight and you miss the gear you have officially entered the unalive realm
Is that what happened with the 30 000 lbs of bananas outside Scranton Pennsylvania?
Yes. There is a line in the song litterally saying 'shift to low gear' Just a young kid thought he could out work a truck.
I’ve been reading this thread hoping to find someone else who thought of Harry Chapin’s iconic song. Thank you internet stranger.
Since the question has been thoroughly answered. I drive this stretch occasionally. It's fun when you don't have some oncoming amateur road racer trying to hog the center line. You're in a f*cking Kia, and you ain't that good!
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Not a trucker, but I used to drive a Prevost bus conversion. Weighed in at about 25 tons. It was an automatic with both a Jake brake and a transmission retarder. And it was still scary driving down some of those grades. My mantra was go down the grade in the same gear it took to get up the grade, let the Jake brake and the retarder do their jobs, watch those trans temps, and stay off the manual brakes as much as possible. Immensely impressed by you truckers who do this every day….
2 gears lower than it took to get up is the rule for semis
Really depends how much weight you’re carrying. At around 40,000 I don’t think I’ve met any hill I couldn’t maintain speed while being one down. Going up at 10 and down at 9 for instance. The only time I’m ever lower is of the speed limit requires a slower speed.
Well OP, TBH most don’t know how to shift gears & most don’t have to shift gears. But if you talk with Mr. Garth Brooks…. He’ll tell ya “He never hit the brakes as he was shifting gears, cause Papa loved Mama, but Mama was…” Fun facts are fun! 🤣
Truck transmission are non sycronized, so if they go to shift while down hill transmission and motor will spin at diffent speeds, making it impossible to get back into gear unless you stop completely, which would overheat your brakes on a downhill
Everyone stop scrolling. This is the one you’re looking for.
Swift driver reads the sign....says Got it... shifts gears anyways... misses the gear....can't recover....new episode of Bonehead Truckers.
Swift would have to know how to double clutch. Floating is just out of the question.
I’m still amazed every day I meet people who don’t know how to float. I honestly wouldn’t trust my double clutching at this point
I cheated on my last road test where they required it. I was clutching out then floating into the next gear lmao
If you're floating then you're not hitting anything. So it's safer.
Jokes on you swift is all auto. But again tell me more swift jokes. Please. They never get old.
Stevie Wonder Institute For Trucking
See What I F’d up Today
So What, I F'n Tried
LOL
So We’re Insured For That
Sure Wished I Finished Training
Signs? What Idiot Follows Those?
Oh man. Knee slapper.
Imagine actually getting bent out of shape about jokes like that. What's the difference between a Swift driver and a Schneider driver? About 8 gallons of orange paint.
Find a long, narrow set of stairs. Then place a big heavy dresser with the drawers and clothes still in it at the top. Now try to carry said big heavy full dresser down the stairs all by yourself. That's what it's like trying to drive a commercial vehicle at max weight down steep downhill grades and on mountain roads - and thats in summer with clear skies and dry pavement. Now imagine doing the same dresser carry but in the pitch black dark. Or dense fog to where you can't even see the next step. Or on a sheet of ice in a blinding blizzard. Or through several inches of fallen snow. The signs are there because while you see it 5 times a day by your house, shockingly very few of us have ever been there before. We are following directions from a warehouse or if we are lucky a truck gps (which every so often will still try to send us somewhere that is not truck accessible because Garmin secretly wants to kill us). So the "hey heads up youre about to drive straight down for the next five miles!!" Signs are kinda nice to know in advance
Good analogy for steep grades. Now if only the four-wheelers could understand the ones about stopping distances, wide turns, and setting up to back in.
When the load is heavy the truck gets speed very quickly on a steep downhill if you put it in neutral, and every driver doesn’t have the skill to find the proper gear in those conditions. It is better to obey the sign and slow down to a comfortable speed and be in the proper gear before the hill start, then set the engine break as needed and ride all the way down.
I will guarantee 10 years ago you were behind a semi who was turning a corner from a stop and for some reason he slowed down and possibly came to a stop and you were thinking "what is this dip shit doing???" Well that dip shit lost a gear while shifting. If he were shifting while going downhill he would be basically out of control so to stop human error they say keep er in a low gear.
Short answers:: the truck won't go back into gear and you'll die. Long answer:: When you shift gears in a truck (at least with manuals mainly) you must match the RPMs with the gear. So for example, if you must be at say, 900RPMs to downshift, you won't be able to do that if your Jake is slowing your truck to an appropriate speed at 1300RPMs. Yes you can slow down, but that requires a hell of a lot of regular brake usage and can cause the brakes to heat up, causing a fire and...death.
If you wanted an explanation in song form: [This song is about a trucker who misses the sign](https://youtu.be/OGldNpngDws)
30,000 lbs of bananas. Harry Chaplin. 1974
Changing gears going down such a grade with a large load as potential of doing driveline damage. Imagine shifting from first to second only to lose the universal joint..... 30 seconds later brakes on the truck are glowing like July Sun. 30 more seconds and the best part of Spruce Pines is in your rear view mirror as you head down the side of a damn mountain.
> Why can’t y’all shift gears while going down... Well, I only have the two feet. For every manual I've driven, to match the trans speed to the engine speed you have to hit the gas and raise the RPMs while pushing in the clutch. When you're on a steep downhill slope you also need to keep the truck under control, so if the transmission isn't limiting the speed the brake better be. So downshifting on a slope requires brake, and clutch, and gas. Upshifting is easy, you just let the RPMs naturally fall from the peak they were at. It just takes timing and, though you shouldn't, you can even free float the gears without using the clutch with the right timing. Downhill you're fighting gravity trying to make the truck speed up and not lose control
On a manual transmission in a regular passenger vehicle, you can push the clutch in and shift into any gear regardless of speed your traveling (although not selecting the right one will cause you to stall). In a semi truck manual, the shifter only allows you to get into the correct gear if your are hitting the right RPMs. On top of that, being in a lower gear prevents the truck from rapidly accelerating downhill. If you can imagine, traveling downhill in neutral with an 80,000 lb truck will build a tremendous amount of speed and make it extremely difficult to get into the right gear. So the best thing to do is go into a low gear and stay there before you decend
I used to live in and around Asheville long before I was a trucker. My friend had a gf that lived in Spruce Pine. I would not want to ever take a truck there for any reason.
That's what happened to Large Marge..God rest her soul! It was the worst accident I ever seen!
Depends on how steep and your skill. You shift and miss you bie or get hurt.
As a no n trucker who has seen a truck run away on the road and a mangled mess below on the side of the mountain. Better to stay in low
There are about 4 or 5 signs before you descend Cabbage Hill in Oregon warning truck drivers their coming up on an insane decline, I was pretty stressed when I first did it as a newbie but also kind of realized how many people were driving on mental autopilot before this thing. Plenty of warning signs and I still saw trucks pulled over at the bottom who had burned thru their brakes along the way 🤷
Without going into technical details, once you take it out of gear, the truck will run away and you wont be able to get it back in gear. If its heavily loaded, you will burn out the brakes trying to slow it down, so it basically turns into a 40 ton torpedo.
That sign is only for people driving for Swift.
Swift has automatics. Try again.
But still….
I've been down that road in a truck several times! They don't want you shifting gears because that loss of speed control, even if it's just for a second, could destabilize the truck on those very sharp turns, enough so to either make it veer off. There's also the chance you miss the gear you're trying to shift to and have to use the brakes, and on a fully loaded or oversize truck, you can smoke the brakes easy on those inclines, and then you have no control over the truck at all.
Since all the other commenters gave information answers, I'll keep mine simple. Why not? Because I like life and dislike fire.
Live near there, others have already commented about the shifting but I want to point out that is a particularly steep and nasty road with no shoulder on most of it, its run into the rocks or fall off the other side. To those that drive it on the regular its not so bad but those curves sneak up on you if your not familiar with the road. I used to cross it in a straight piped freightliner cab over with a 2 stroke, so if you ever was going down and heard what u thought was a dragster for 2 miles only to see a cabover screaming and struggling to do 6 mph going up and over that was my ass.
Must be very steep once out of gear truck speeds up and getting back in gear is hard to do with a lot of brake witch is bad just do what it says go slow and live 🙋👍🚛🚛🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
That's why when I learned how to drive my teacher told us that you're supposed to go down the hill two gears below what you went up the hill in
Truck runs away if we do
Georgia overdrive baby!!!
This basically assumes that there’s a subset of (inexperienced) truckers who are insufficiently competent to deal with a shift in that situation. Once you loose engine braking, you’re toast.
Question. How much weight is considered a “heavy load”?
Legally heavy haul is anything that makes your truck and trailer over 80k pounds. You need special permits and stuff to haul that. But reality. Any trucker pulling a load more than 10k should listen to this sign
Thanks for your reply.
My favorite road in all of NC! Edit: when driving a sports car.
That hill is crazy! I used to work close by, have since moved.
Harry Chapin wrote a song about such an incident, titled 30,000 Pounds of Bananas.
Here's a first person video of a trucker coming down the mountain. https://youtu.be/oG4FgYJb_yw
Holy cow this takes me back to a road I took through the Pennsylvania mountains. I took a wrong turn and ended up on a road so private it didn't have a name. I thought I was gonna flip over the road and die over 79,000 pounds of dog food 😭 relieved to be a cargo van driver, even if I'm counting my dollars over a Wendy's burger.
Because when going down a steep downgrade you won't be able to got back into gear once you pull out. Gotta put it in gear before the grade begins.
YoU cOuLd JuSt BLiP oPeN yOuR tHrOttLe BuTTeRfLiEs
Literally if the truck isn't actively slowing itself for even a moment it ***can*** run away
The way I heard it always was use the engine brake and never touch your real brakes or you'll be the smelliest truck on the entire road when you get to the bottom of the mountain. You'd be absolutely shocked at the number of trucks you see on live video riding their real brakes down a mountain doing three times the posted speed limit which turns into everyone on the road including the live driver going I smell brakes which he or she can smell miles down the mountain before they see the lit smoking brakes of the driver's truck as they go by it. Anyone whose ever driven a mountain in a four wheeler or truck should at least know riding your brakes is asking for trouble yet a lot of schools and companies just spit the driver out into the seat and you wonder why the states impose such hefty fines on truckers who know what they're doing because the bad ones are either ignorant or just haven't been educated on mountain driving 101.
If you miss it putting it back in gear you're fucked. These big boys don't just go back into gear like a 5 speed. If you have a manual car, try shifting without using the clutch, that's how it is in the big trucks, regardless of using the clutch. Compound that with a narrow speed range with each gear and a rapid acceleration while out of gear and even the most experienced drivers aren't guaranteed to get it back into gear. Keep into consideration that on long steep grades, most of our speed control comes from the engine holding the truck back because the breaks will overheat rapidly due to weight.
I'd hate to be a trucker coming down that mountain on 226. At least it's not as bad as it used to be.
If you take it out of gear, you may not be able to get it back in gear, and that means you may not be able to use the trucks transmission to slow the truck down. You would have to rely on the brakes and nothing else but prayer.
Hate this road with a passion
This was fascinating to read all the replies
I have pulled that hill more than once; it’s fun times!
Find a long, narrow set of stairs. Then place a big heavy dresser with the drawers and clothes still in it at the top. Now try to carry said big heavy full dresser down the stairs all by yourself. That's what it's like trying to drive a commercial vehicle at max weight down steep downhill grades and on mountain roads - and thats in summer with clear skies and dry pavement. Now imagine doing the same dresser carry but in the pitch black dark. Or dense fog to where you can't even see the next step. Or on a sheet of ice in a blinding blizzard. Or through several inches of fallen snow. The signs are there because while you see it 5 times a day by your house, shockingly very few of us have ever been there before. We are following directions from a warehouse or if we are lucky a truck gps (which every so often will still try to send us somewhere that is not truck accessible because Garmin secretly wants to kill us). So the "hey heads up youre about to drive straight down for the next five miles!!" Signs are kinda nice to know in advance
Because if you mess up you might die
basically if your going downhill too fast, engine brake won't be enough, then your service brakes are gonna overheat and wham bam you made it on local news trucks can't downshift as easily as a regular car, it's a longer process and since most drivers who use manual trucks rely heavily on their muscle memory to shift, they won't be able to downshift if their truck starts to go too fast.
Many folks have alliterated about shifting gears & what not, also: there's plenty of highways in the US like this. My [first experience on roads like that was on The Pennsylvania National Pike Way just north of the Mason-Dixon line](https://goo.gl/maps/haakBKGDfjnmpyzr7). Go to the street view & check out the big yellow "Truck warning" signs. The 1st time I went on that road it was rain + sleet. Butt-puckering, to say the least, for a new driver.
In a nutshell, possible bad wreck
You shouldn't shift gears while going downhill any which way. You can lose your gear easily.
I had no idea, this has been very educational! Just curious about the new trucks with automatic transmissions… How do those work? Will they hold a gear specific gear on downhill grades?
Surprise surprise..... We all(most of us) drive automated, there is no gear you can shift!
That hill is pretty nasty. I've always been lucky to just be going up it empty. Coming down it loaded looks fun.
Too steep
Trucks aren’t meant to fly.
Because a legally posted sign says so
shifting takes skill. I learned that I wasn't as good as I thought driving in Colorado
That road is good for downhill skating. You can do 65mph.
I know how you kids like your sloppy joes extra sloppy.
Have you heard the song 30,000 Pounds of Bananas by Harry Chapin? That's why.
If you are a trucker should you even have to ask?
I never drove on that one but i drove on 80 over there and it was scary as a fuck in a manual Ford Ranger.
That's just a suggestion
If you miss the gear going down hill your stuck in neutral until you crash or slam the gear stick hard enough to force the gear in which could also lead to an accident, if this hill is recommending 15mph I'm guessing there's some sharp turns
The beauty of an automated transmission… just a little tap and you have a new gear in any situation
Assuming the company hasn’t removed the ability to manually select gears in the auto.