Hedon’s gravity adventure

After about two weeks of not posting a single word, I finally have something interesting to say that isn’t just bitching. It’s even something semi-exciting… well at least it was exciting to me because in all my years on the road it had never happened before and that’s always a good thing. Here’s what happened:

We pulled in to the receiver and dropped our loaded trailer in the area assigned. No big deal. Bobtailed around to the shipping clerk cause at this joint you had to get assigned an empty trailer and a gate pass with that trailer number on it. Again, ho hum. Went back around to the empty trailer lot and started looking for the trailer we were supposed to pick up. Found it at the end of a row of trailers.

Now our trailer was about three and a half feet away from the trailer next to it which is a very nice distance. Sometimes when you pick up at these joints the yard dogs have crammed the trailers in so tightly that you can’t even get in between them to raise the landing gear. But like I said, ours was quite a respectable distance away from the trailer to the passenger side and there was no trailer to the driver’s side so it looked like an easy deal. Except, that our trailer wasn’t actually in a real (level) spot. It was tilting wildly toward the passenger side on this sort of steep muddy incline of an apron that circled the empty trailer lot.

If you’re not a driver, feel free to take a moment to go revisit the Hags’ 5th Wheel and Trailer Hooking tutorial to brush up so you can be as put out as the rest of us at what happened next.

I didn’t think much about the slant because I’ve picked up lots of tilted trailers over the years. I knew that as I backed the tractor under the trailer the tractor would tilt at the same angle so I figured everything would line up nicely. I started easing under the trailer. I backed slowly under which lifted the trailer slightly as it should. Then the tractor was stopped short with an abrupt thud. I figured I must have my line off so I pulled forward to try it again. Again I backed under the trailer and again with the damn thud. Muttering under my breath, I got out to see what the problem was.

Fifth wheel slanted too far

When I walked back to see what the heck was going on, I realized our empty trailer was now about 18 inches closer to the passenger-side trailer than it had been before. Crap. The problem was that I had just greased our fifth wheel the previous day. And it really was a mighty tilt. So every time I eased the tractor under and lifted the trailer slightly the trailer just slid downhill. That meant the kingpin was hitting the 5th wheel about where the arrow is pointing. Now you don’t have to line up the 5th wheel and kingpin perfectly, but you do have to hit somewhere in the green area if you’re going to connect to that trailer.

I had never had this happen before and I have picked up a lot of leaning trailers. Hmmm. I admit I was tempted to just back under it a couple more times until it (gently?!) came to rest against the level trailer parked next to it. If the level trailer had belonged to TWMNBN that’s probably exactly what I would have done, but it was a different company’s property so I didn’t want to risk damaging some innocent bystander trailer.

Much better than a chock made out of rocks and Oklahoma's red dirt

I ended up wandering around the lot gathering three large rocks. I slowly backed under the trailer again to let it slide down hill and parked with the kingpin against the blunt (red) edge of the 5th wheel. I raised the landing gear a couple of inches then crawled under the trailer making sure I was below the danger area if the trailer had just gone ahead and slid all the way into the one next to it. Once under there, I used my rocks to build a sort of tire chock to hopefully keep it from sliding the next time I tried to hook up.

I lowered the landing gear back down carefully making sure my rock pile didn’t shift. Good. Then I got back in the truck, dumped the tractor air bags, and pulled out from under the trailer ever so gently. So far so good. I lined up even more to the right and tried again. The rocks held so this time I was able to get completely under the trailer and finally heard the lovely click of the 5th wheel jaws locking into place around the kingpin. WooHoo! Mission accomplished. Finally! All I had to do at that point was move my rock pile over onto the grass and finish hooking up as usual. Then I had to make a real effort to get all the red Oklahoma dirt off my hands, shoes and jeans before climbing back into the truck. Sadly, that adventure wasn’t quite as successful.

The whole thing took about thirty minutes for a process that normally takes me five minutes. But at least it was interesting. Irritating… but interesting. I’ve been so pissed off at TWMNBN lately, that it was nice to have a period to just enjoy being a trucker and solving a problem.  I do love a good puzzle.