@plonkster That Actros has 4 gears low and 4 high. To get from 1-4 to 5-8, going up and down the gears, between 4 and 5 when in neutral, you "slap" the gear lever to the right, you can hear the air hissing when it goes thought the "gate". 

Jip, I drove Bedford's in the SADF. You learn a lot driving them.Awesome "donkeys".

Have driven splitter boxes also. 1 split, 2 split - some with a "gate" added. On speed going uphill you sometimes keep the gear just split it down and over the top you go. Once with a empty trailer, coming back from George, I had about 5 cars behind me refusing to come pass ... truck was on speed up and down the hills, I just split the gear going up. Rule is, once you have the momentum ... KEEP IT!

The automatic gearboxes where you can either wait for the computer to do the changing or you do it by touching the "gear lever". Like them a lot too.
You pull away with +-36 tons, cab lifts a lot, touch the "gear lever" cab drops a lot, lifts a lot again as it engages the next gear ... you can do that "dance" +-18 times if you want. 🙂 

In the army with the exhaust break and double clutching, some guys with fast feet could: Clutch, exhaust break, rev, clutch, next gear ... it was a "melody" pulling away / gearing down.

Next box I want to learn about is a Fuller gearbox ... and then next to change a Fuller box without the clutch. That is an art.

 

Few things I want to share to all out there:

• If anything I say offends anyone, note that I am calling a spade a bloody shovel on purpose to shock people into thinking!
• If you are not the person I am referring to, don't be upset. If you are, and you are upset, good. 🙂 
• Yes, there are idiot truck drivers out there (rules below still apply)
  • ... or maybe they where just very tired,
  • unpaid (yes it happens a lot)
  • or frustrated as the wife is upset that he is on the road for 3 months
  • They are human too, doing the best they can with a huge responsibility.
• If you think you can drive better than them, go and get a Code 14 (EC) license, go and do deliveries in peak hour traffic. Go, I dare you. Your view will change.
• And if you are a truck driver, or was one, lets educate the non-trucking drivers.
   

Few rules:

• Do not pull into a gap in front of a truck and then slow down / stop. If you do that you are bloody stupid and / or ignorant - tell your wife with the kids in the car! to watch out.
  • That gap truck drivers leave in front of them is to be able to STOP IN TIME! 
  • In comparison your car is a dinky toy with maybe kids inside and becomes a "speed bump" for +-40 ton truck.
  • You can make a difference.
• In traffic, give a truck a gap ... don't make them slow down.
  • It takes forever to pick up speed which in turn slows down the traffic behind even more.
  • You can make a difference.

• And this is for SOME drivers, not all:
  • If a truck drives in the yellow lane ... for Pete's sake ... go past or pull behind the truck / flash lights to show you are not going to come past.
  • It is stressful wanting to help other traffic and then that one driver just sits there.
  • Make a move! don't just sit there, with 20 cars behind YOU. Get out of the way or come past.
  • You can make a difference.
• And if you are in front of the 20 cars wanting to pass:
  • SHOW the truck driver you are going to go in such a manner that he and all 20 other cars behind you can SEE you are going to go.
  • You can make a difference.
• Give a hand and guide a truck driver. It REALLY helps and speeds things up.
  • But please, stand that s[he] can clearly see you in the mirrors.
  • Don't tell them what to do ... they cannot hear you!
  • And at night when you give a helping hand standing 20-30m from the cab where the driver sits: He cannot see youuuu!
• If you overtake a truck, watch the trucks front wheels going past.
  • Assume he cannot see you.
  • If the front wheel turn, the trailer takes a wee bit longer to change course, get away, pull back / accelerate.
  • Opposite also goes, he turns away, trailer still keeps going a wee while on the previous course

Respect truck drivers / delivery people:  
The majority are really cool family people, same as you.
They work ridiculous hours for silly salaries.
Respect their efforts.

Some more rules:

• If a truck tries to reverse, you pulled up behind it, he never saw you ... PULL THE BLOODY DINGES BACK!
  • Don't hoot and shout as we cannot hear you ... cannot see you.
  • Don't panic.
  • Just move back or jump out of the car if you cannot pull back. You are stuffed in any case.
  • And don't show and scream at the driver either ... he has had a bigger shock than you.
  • You can make a difference.
• Truck comes around a corner at a robot or a stop street ... pull back or look like the idiot who holds up the traffic.
  • He has the right to cut across lanes.
  • And it is simple geometry. Those trailer wheels follow a very specific trajectory, you become a "speed bump".
  • You can make a difference.
• When a truck is trying to push back into a delivery gap designed by architects / building owner / builder or just bad luck with centimeters spare on the sides, blocking lane/s of traffic:
  • It makes it 100 times worse when you shout / hoot displaying your frustrations. 
  • Do you for one moment think that the driver under already immense pressure, knowing the traffic is there, can do it faster?
  • You can make a difference.

Last thought: If you are around a truck and don't get the truck drivers attention, i.e. he looks you in the eye, acknowledges you are there: Then. You. Are. Not. There!

Here is a view from a cab, with all the mirrors. Some of those cyclists would have gone unnoticed under the trailer wheels ... they could not see the drivers eyes: 

 

Titbit - something I picked up: Pulling a fully laden 3 axle trailer truck having to change lanes on the:
N2 in Cape Town: Taxis give you a gap, ask permission to get in front of you, pull off the to side and other drivers mostly give you a chance to change lanes.
M5 / N1 in Cape Town: Taxis are less accommodating, SUV's / Double cabs (being the worst) and other cars seldom give you a chance
And drivers on the N1 tend to push into that gap and brake in front of you.

Joke is that in traffic a truck driver can see far ahead ... you are stuck bro, you ain't gonna go nowhere any faster.

 

Truck drivers overall are really patient, disciplined and experience drivers who work very long hours having a huge responsibility.
Help them by adhering to these simple thoughts above.

11 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Rule is, once you have the momentum ... KEEP IT!

When you transport cattle it is even more important. Any sudden changes in momentum and they fall over. Then you have to get them up again, otherwise you get bruising and in severe cases breathing issues and death. It also depends a lot on race (hahaha), some cattle races have a tendency to lie down more than others... and then they usually get trampled and sometimes they die.

Very often you'd see a cattle truck on the side of the road, and a farmer on top with a long cattle prod trying to get them up... then sometimes he'd put on his overall, get INTO the truck with the cattle and try to get them up. Then sometimes you'll have an old Brahman cow that lies there mooing while you have the cattle prod up her ear... but won't move. The most extreme case I heard of was a truck driver who put newspaper under the animal and set it on fire to get it back up...

Truck drivers who drive animals get very upset with you when you brake-check them.

Cattle trucker drivers are seriously place on the next level in my books.

 

2 minutes ago, plonkster said:

... when you brake-check them.

There are a lot of videos of YouTube of extremely stupid ignorant drivers break-checking trucks, caught on camera. 

When you see with what power a car is pushed / dragged, you realized that you have no chance.

This trucker was so nice to take his truck and the car off the road, with ease.

 

See at 1:05 - with impunity the car is pushed:

 

This trucker probably does not know there is a car, he probably assumes it just headwinds, as the trailer is empty:

 

1 hour ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

There are a lot of videos of YouTube of extremely stupid ignorant drivers break-checking trucks, caught on camera. 

The worst one I saw was someone who stopped dead on an onramp, to make some kind of point to the truck behind them. The truck managed to stop in time, and was then hit from behind by another truck. The momentum was so much that the stopped truck was smashed right into the parked vehicle (serves them right on some level), but also injuring the truck driver (not very nice).

Aaah here it is, at 4:22.

2 hours ago, plonkster said:

Aaah here it is, at 4:22.

Ever seen this one - that is a level of stupid I cannot fathom. Drive to the next off ramp, take the scenic route.

 

The other day I delivered wine ... man what a sensitive load.

No thank to Toyota SUV driver refusing to give me a chance to pull into a small entrance in under 1 minute. I wonder if the driver of the SUV drinks the wine I delivered?

Was in Montague this afternoon in 5pm traffic. Interesting to note that out of 10 times I need to change lanes in peak hour traffic, 8 of the 10 times it will be non-white drivers, even taxis, who will pull back to make space. 

People, without trucks you won't have a house, solar system ... food / wine. Give a truck a break.

 

And in other news. THIS will not happen in SA!

 

 

Overloading is a big problem in SA, and they authorities are not succeeding in solving it. See, with overloading, the problem 9/10 times is not the driver, it is the owners / loaders of the trucks that are causing the problem, with the driver ending up in jail or with mega big fines.

And if you refuse to drive, well, you can lose your job.

As they offered free checking of the road worthiness of trucks a while back, at no risk to the drivers record / or any fines, I thought, hold on, lets address this issue.

The previous emails has gone up the "chain of command", then it stopped, time to push again:

 

 

Edited June 6, 20197 yr by Guest