Why you don't run landing gears all the way down when dropping a trailer

all right I am at my destination I just finished dropping the trailer behind me I'm in pontoon beach Illinois this is a major distribution center doesn't really matter if you know where I'm going on this one so I'm headed to the target distribution center that's where I'll be delivering out for 310 trailer trailer parking spot 3:10 I didn't give me a gather there's seven zero to five six trailer number 310 is going to be a ways way hundreds right now I've got another load is going like says go into a district Allah target distribution center and Oconomowoc Wisconsin never even heard of the place Oconomowoc weird-ass name you know up here there are some weird names I'm assuming these come from the American Indian traditions you know this this was real strong Indian country years ago and I'm assuming these names are carried over from when this land belonged to the Indians before we came cheated about a ball read above everything but see this is 184 305 but people to see in the place right off of the interstate off of 270 about where 270 and 255 cross interstate 270 and interstate 255 right there at that intersection thus YouTube 14 get higher pretty much everybody comes out here as you can see by the trailers we've got Walmart trailers here we've got Heartland Express celadon JB Hunt of course there's Miller's trailers BCS Snider oh lord have mercy bump almost date my truck see we've got gordon-gordon transport there's CR England I follow the CR England guy worried we hardly see these spots on the ground and I don't forgot what number I put important the same this is 257 important for 310 it's too good night but yeah we've got pretty much everybody comes here there's Warner Warner trailer white brothers whoever that is seen it either or Crisco Vasiliy court yes that's a that's a brilliant trailer let's sleep three we're getting closer this melis guy up here actually came in after they were working on lanes I was having to wait line about the same time I pulled up he got they got that Lang fix so he got to pull out there seven oh two five six there is my trailer 3:10 that's it so you get our pleasures then we're going to go ahead and back up to this trailer lately I have been catching a lot of trailers the the dark have been dropped and the people that have dropping them have have been raising or lowering the landing gears way too far so if you become a driver and I think this is going to be one of them trailers I'll tell you the second yep sure is alright so I'm underneath the trailer but but I didn't feel the trailer shut along to the fifth wheel and so now I've got to get out check it and even if it did settle on the fifth wheel a little closer to their own jump the kingpin even if it did settle on the fifth-wheel it's still to gain money so I'm gonna take you out here and I'll show you what I'm talking about let's look at this gap you see there's a gap right here between the fifth wheel keep in going into the fifth wheel not gonna I don't think I'm in any danger of dropping or jumping the kingpin I don't know it's there's quite a big gap right there so I well when you drop a trailer you lower these landing gears all right and you should leave you know about a quart quarter inch to a half inch gap underneath the landing gear that's up so that the when you drop the truck it'll drop the trailer that half inch or so now we've got airbags on our trucks so we can drop the trailer or drop the truck down that half inch so we don't actually drop the trailer onto the ground well what that does is it allows the next driver who picks the trailer up did you hear that that's that weight coming off of that off of that gear to not have to do what I'm doing right now which is crank the out of this landing gear so I can get the weight onto the tractor and not jump the fifth wheel and we're in a slow gear all right almost good there was that second pop so all right now if you look you see there's a little bit of a gap between landing here in the ground I typically leave more than that but that allow us I can move it into the fast gear here in a second now look fifth wheel there is no gap anymore I'm no danger of jumping the fifth wheel flipz finished connecting oh man all right okay it's my breath for a second that guy's that shape okay when you lower your landing gears too far there's a couple of things that can happen the first is I'm connected the first is what you just saw there's a gap between the fifth wheel and the bottom plate of the the trailer okay second is when you drop a trailer like this the yard jockeys have trucks that have hydraulic fifth wheels so what they do is they back underneath of it and their fifth wheel lifts and it lifts the the trailer off the ground so they never touch the landing gears okay now when they drop those trailers a lot of times they're in a hurry so they back in they drop that hydraulic they slam that trailer on the ground and a lot of times that will when it hits the ground it will put it in a bind okay at an angle so when you back when the next driver comes to pick that chunk up or pick that trailer up he backs underneath of it if the trailer is left too high and he backs underneath the one of two things can happen first he can jump this fifth wheel that happens when the kingpin misses the slot and instead of going into the slot and locking in place it rides up over the top of the fifth wheel and jumps the other side it can be held to get out of okay the second thing that can happen is that it's got the landing gear in a bind and so when the driver backs his truck up underneath of it he can't get the landing gear up because landing gear is in a bind and he can't lift the truck or can't lift the landing gear with the truck because it's in a bind so what you do they the proper way to do it is to back up lower your landing gear back your trailer and lower your landing gear until you've got I usually leave about yay much of a gap okay half inch to an inch all right then you we have Auto disconnect okay so you take your auto disconnect you disconnect your fifth-wheel okay you unlock it you pull out from underneath it as soon as it pulls free not when you're off the fifth wheel but when you break that contact with the kingpin you'll know it because your trunk will move instead of instead of locking in place when it moves forward just a couple inches stop and hit your deflate button okay you're the Flay button will lower your airbags and drop it that last inch or so until it touches the ground so now the yard jockey picks that trailer up he puts wherever it gets the legs in a vine the next driver comes and he picks it up when he picks it up it lifts all the weight off of the landing gear takes the landing gear off the ground and so it's no longer in a bind and you can easily crank it up okay it makes things a lot easier for the for the driver picking it up and it keeps them from having to sit here for 30 minutes fighting that thing trying to get it to move so when you drop your trailer and leave a gap all right use your airbags to lower that gap to the ground so that you don't do any damage to the trailer when you drop it being respectful the next driver that's going to pick it up while I'm at it also check your trailer when you drop it make sure there's nothing mechanically wrong with it because the next driver the fix it up is the one that's going to have to get it fixed so we'll leave it at that I got to finish hook it up get out of here get started on my next run and we'll catch you later all right peace out

Channel: Steven Neill

Views: 331,174

Keywords: mobile

Id: ZrYIaFb2Fmk

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 16 2014