Truckin’ Tips: Part One
Copyright Sandy Long
You can learn a lot sitting in a truckstop listening to some ol’ hands talk, or by being observant at any time on the road; fuel stops, loading docks, rest areas and jobsites are a trucker’s classroom, other drivers are the professors. Through my years on the road I have picked up some tips to make my job easier.
Winter
¥ Carry an emergency kit of food and water. Peanut butter, crackers, canned meat, fruits, vegetables and juice will provide you high energy food to wait out a storm.
¥ Take a big metal coffee can and punch some holes around the bottom side of it. Place a couple of emergency candles in it and light them. Close your sleeper curtains and the candle furnace will keep you from freezing if the truck shuts down. Make sure you keep a window cracked though.
¥ Place a spare heavy blanket under your bunk mattress. Bring the sides up against the wall. It will help stop the cold air coming up from under the bunk.
¥ Rubbing alcohol will work to keep your air lines from freezing, also a pint in each tank will help keep fuel from jelling if you cannot find fuel additives.
¥ If you are running from temperature extremes, run a bottle of car gas line additive to each tank once every couple of weeks. Really helps keep water out of the tanks.
¥ Collapsible snow shovels are light and do not take up much space.
¥ Carry 5#s of salt in your truck to get out of that dock that is icy.
¥ Keep good books, magazines, puzzle books on the truck in the winter in case you get snowed in.
Windshields/Mirrors
Ø Ammonia based window cleaners seem to take bugs off fairly well. I spray my windshields with the cleaner before I seat the fuel nozzle in the tanks, then let it sit while I get started fueling, then use the truckstop’s fluid and sponge/squeegie to finish cleaning the windows.
Ø Rubbing alcohol will help thaw ice from mirrors.
Ø If you use the truckstop’s fluid from the bucket, then make your windshield very wet with it and then let it soak while you do other chores, then go back and scrub the windshields.
Ø A small piece of wet carpet will take bugs off of windshields, painted surfaces or grills without scratching them.
Ø A coat of that product that makes rain bead helps ease window washing.
Ø A 6” squeegie is a slick tool to carry to quickly clean a mirror when it is raining and you have to back up.
Trailers
v Carry a white grease pencil to mark the side walls of the trailer tires in the winter time, this allows you to make sure that the brakes have not frozen up and the tires are turning.
v Balm for chapped lips that comes in the little squeeze tube makes a great glad hand gasket lubricant…it is small enough to fit in your pocket and won’t leak out.
v If you own your own dry van trailer and the wooden floor starts leaking through the cracks of the board floor…wash it out completely, let it dry and then coat the floor thickly with marine grade polyurathane .
v I use the product made to ease stuck bolts to keep my tandem sliders sliding easily.
v Carry a 1’ long piece of 4x4 in case your tandem brakes won’t hold to slide.
v If your tandem pins are hard to pull and you are live loading, then try it while the loader is going in and out of the trailer or before you move the trailer…sometimes it is enough bounce to loosen the pins.
v Go in reverse and hit the brakes..then set the tractor brakes and let the trailer settle…sometimes this will center the tandem pins in the middle of the hole so you can get them pulled.
v If you are dropping the trailer, pull your 5th wheel release before you dolly down…MAKE SURE YOU SET THE TRAILER BRAKES AND THE TRACTOR BRAKES BEFORE YOU DO THIS!
Flatbeds
¬ Loads of lumber and small pipe walk out of the bundles…Put an extra 2x4 on top of your dunnage in the front of the first stack and the rear of the last stack to raise the front of the front bundle and the rear of the rear bundle. If you don’t do this, you are hauling lumber, and the boards walk…find a hose and wet them down. Lumber dries out when going down the road.
¬ When loading long objects like 50’ beam, put two pieces of dunnage on top of each other on the rear of your trailer…this makes up for the hump in the trailer so the beam doesn’t rock.
¬ A 2x4 under the front and back of an empty container on a flatbed will make securing it easier.
¬ Carpet remnants and packing quilts make excellent padding under your tarps to protect them from tearing.
¬ Find old mud flaps and hang them behind your chains in the headache rack. Stops your chains from banging and also protects the headache rack.
¬ If you have an uneven top line to your load, where it dips down, run a piece of rope thru the d-rings and tie it off to the rub rail…then run a bungie or two from the rope to the center beam under the trailer, pull the bungie tight, it will help keep the tarp from flapping too much.
A day where you learn something new is not a wasted day. Most drivers are flattered if you ask them why they do something a certain way and will be glad to explain it to you. The knowledge you glean from them and by observing how others do things will help make your job easier along the way.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from me and mine! Be safe.
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