Hot Brakes

[other dog]

Saw this truck coming down Sandstone Mountain Monday evening with the trailer brakes smoking like hell. The left lane is closed all the way down so you need to come off it slow enough that the engine brake does most of the work- there was a pickup pulling a trailer then a tandem log truck pulling a pup trailer going real slow in front of this truck. He had one more runaway ramp in front of him but I don't think he needed it.I was going west with about 20,000 lbs. on so I was out of radio range pretty quick. There was 2 state troopers sitting in the construction at the bottom too.

[Freightrain]

"..........ya see officer..........I've got a smokin' hot load that needs delivered by tonight"......................

Lucky he didn't have flames comin' out!

[jaysm35a2]

"Freightliners beat the brakes off the competition "

[vision386]

I once had a woman fly past me coming down through fancy gap on 77 at about 90 miles an hour,i hollered at her on the radio "hey swift,you know your trailer brakes are on fire right?" her reply was "you drive your truck and i'll drive mine,asshole!!!" well,when she did get it stopped,(about 5 miles past the OPEN NC scale at the state line) there were about 5-6 police cars,and she was in the "postion" up against the side of the truck! so no good deed goes un-punished!.........................Mark

[Bollweevil]

I was coming off Monteagle east bound once, long before the last improvement. I don't know if you remember, but in sight of the bottom of the hill there used to be a cut with solid granite on both sides, just two lanes, and no way that you could have stuffed three trucks through at the same time. I was in the right lane, going slow, so that I could stop if I had to, when a freight truck blew by with the brakes smoking. The driver was giving me some kind of hell on the radio for holding him up. At the time it had not been quite 2 months, since another hot shot had killed himself and another trucker, when he got to the cut, found two trucks side by side and had nowhere to go.

[other dog]

I was coming off Monteagle east bound once, long before the last improvement. I don't know if you remember, but in sight of the bottom of the hill there used to be a cut with solid granite on both sides, just two lanes, and no way that you could have stuffed three trucks through at the same time. I was in the right lane, going slow, so that I could stop if I had to, when a freight truck blew by with the brakes smoking. The driver was giving me some kind of hell on the radio for holding him up. At the time it had not been quite 2 months, since another hot shot had killed himself and another trucker, when he got to the cut, found two trucks side by side and had nowhere to go.

...well?..what happened?

[other dog]

I once had a woman fly past me coming down through fancy gap on 77 at about 90 miles an hour,i hollered at her on the radio "hey swift,you know your trailer brakes are on fire right?" her reply was "you drive your truck and i'll drive mine,asshole!!!" well,when she did get it stopped,(about 5 miles past the OPEN NC scale at the state line) there were about 5-6 police cars,and she was in the "postion" up against the side of the truck! so no good deed goes un-punished!.........................Mark

that's exactly like the story i've told before- we were hauling pulpwood from a wood yard in Buckingham, Va. to the Westvaco paper mill in Covington. We'd run rt. 60 to Lexington, Va, then jump on 81 north one exit, then 64 to Covington. I don't know if you've been across that part of 60, has a 65' length restriction now, but those mountains before you get to Buena Vista are nothing to take lightly. 2 of our drivers going up loaded met a Schneider truck going east just a little ways from the top. They told him he was going kind of fast and he made a similar reply, something like "F**k you, I know what i'm doing!"

When they unloaded and were on the way back he was down in the "s" curves near the bottom, turned over.

[other dog]

"..........ya see officer..........I've got a smokin' hot load that needs delivered by tonight"......................

Lucky he didn't have flames comin' out!

Yeah, I hope he had sense enough not to stop at the bottom and look at his brake drums smoking, that's the worst thing to do- that's when they burst into flames and blow out tires.

It's level at the bottom for several miles, then you start climbing up the other side so he could have let them cool by the time he got up there. Then you stop, look around, smoke a cigarette, say "damn, that was a close one!"