Missing Gears Ice Road Truckers

[blufford]

I don't drive a tractor trailer. Why do when the drivers miss a gear usually down shifting (on ice road truckers) they have to stop their rig and start over?

[big rockpile]

You have to have your RPM's up to at least 1800 where most Trucks you don't even need to use the Clutch.If you miss a Gear it throws everything out of Whack and you have to start from scratch.If your going up you won't be going fast enough,if your going down your Truck will push you too fast.So either way you have to stop and put it in gear.

Plus going off a Mountain you what to go down in the same Gear you would go up in,to use the Gears to hold the Truck Back without using the Brakes which will get too Hot and catch fire.But it will push the RPM's up on your Engine to where you have to use the Brakes or go up a Gear if you don't have a Jake.This is what I hated about my Truck I had no Jake but would run Mountains all the time.I found if I could see down the Mountain it was better to run a little faster than I should just to make it easier on the Truck.Made it fun at times.

big rockpile

[fantasymaker]

The simple answer is because they are not very good at what they are doing.

A road tractor usually has a triple shaft un sinkronized transmission.
There are 3 shafts running thru the tranny's case the center one (it has a split in the middle)usually transmits the power but to get the different "speeds" (gear reductions) the power flows from a sliding gear on the shafts to one of the gears on one of the outer shafts then back.
Unlike a car where these gears have soft things between them to help match the gear speeds in a truck they dont. So the driver has to vary the engine RPM to match the input gear speed to the output gear speed. Its sorta like trying to put two window fans togather without getting a lot of clanking and crashing.( in the dark from the other room)
If the difference is too great they wont be able to engage each other.
Downshifting on a hill is the hardest situation to do this in since things are working aginst each other.
on a upshift as you bring the engine out of gear it will naturally slow down , at some point matching the output gear . If you hold a nice gentle pressure on the gear lever at some point it softly matches into the output gear and engages.
You can make the process even more gentle by slowly reduceing the throttle and thus the engine speed.
But in a down hill downshift its different.
Gravity wants to speed the truck and thus the output gear up.
Your throttle has to bring the engine speed up and match it..
Its hard to bring the speed up gently and still fast enough to get into gear before the output shaft speed gets to high.
Most use a "stab an jab" approch because of the VERY short window of time to make the match but if they miss it the truck speed is going up and they often dont know even which gear to select to match the now higher speed.
With speed increasing and the truck out of control on a slick an down hill surface most chose to stop the game and get a new start........ a wise choice.

[Cheryl in SD]

Originally Posted by fantasymaker

The simple answer is because they are not very good at what they are doing.

He's got it right! Dh couldn't believe all the drivers who couldn't find their gear on this season. He says it should be second nature to the drivers by now, no matter how big the hill.

Oh, he also says the Dalton road has nothing on Wyoming mountain roads in winter.

[wy_white_wolf]

Originally Posted by Cheryl in SD

....Oh, he also says the Dalton road has nothing on Wyoming mountain roads in winter.

He must really like South Pass.

[Cheryl in SD]

His "favorite" is US 191 from Rock Springs to Vernal in a good snow storm. But there are several second place favorites.

[Wis Bang]

There is a reason they call 'em "gearjammers"...

Some transmissions had wider ratios and you could 'double clutch' sort of like shifting to neutral and goosing the throttle w/ the clutch engauged while in neutral making the input side speed up and shift into the next gear. Most drivers prefered to float between the gears w/ out using the clutch though this does 'shock damage' to the splined areas where the gears silde on the shafts.

The newer electric controlled engines changed the torque 'sweet spot' and they started pushing the idea of 'progressive' shifting as the RPMs reached the peak of the torque curve instead of waiting till the engine approached max governed RPM. This led to the demise of the Mack Maxi-Torque 5-speed which almost anyone could learn to shift because it used the entire powerband.

That was a shame for tanker-yankers as you could use the long shift time to allow the liquid to slosh slowly. The short choppy 'progressive' shifting slammed the rear of the tanker into the rearward moving liquid 'wave' alot more beating the tank, truck and driver alot more.

Tankers always knew the exact top of the hill as the load goes from being dead weight against the back of the tank to a gentle push something mentioned by 'Jake' when he took the load of 'flow improving' product up the Dalton in a double conical tanker this season.

If most auto drivers ever experienced the dynamics of liquids moving in a tanker, they would stay far away from them...every time they are forced to hit the brakes hard there is this 2nd push from the liquid weight stopping against the front of the tank. It is enough to push an almost stopped truck forward another few feet...

[fantasymaker]

Originally Posted by Wis Bang

There is a reason they call 'em "gearjammers"...

Some transmissions had wider ratios and you could 'double clutch' sort of like shifting to neutral and goosing the throttle w/ the clutch engauged while in neutral making the input side speed up and shift into the next gear. Most drivers prefered to float between the gears w/ out using the clutch though this does 'shock damage' to the splined areas where the gears silde on the shafts.

...

The easy way to think of double clutching is to think of neutral as a gear that you have to shift into before shifting to any other gear.
Sorta a "HomeGear" on the tranny.
As explained in the quote above You do this to get the gear speeds to match. Its supposed to be done EVERY shift but since you "clutch and shift clutch and shift" to move just one speed up or down its a lot more work and you usually have to do it FAST .
It also makes your mistakes much more apprent!

[Cornhusker]

Originally Posted by Cheryl in SD

He's got it right! Dh couldn't believe all the drivers who couldn't find their gear on this season. He says it should be second nature to the drivers by now, no matter how big the hill.

Oh, he also says the Dalton road has nothing on Wyoming mountain roads in winter.

At one point early on in the show, didn't they say something about those trucks having a different transmission, at least different than what the Canadians (Hugh and Alex) were used to?
Those guys have been driving for decades, you'd think they'd have it figured out by now.

[rancher1913]

everything is right for normal trucks so far but really heavy haulers use a extra tranny to get super low end and a normal high end. on my truck I have two sticks and for every 4 gears I have to shift both at the same time and if I miss a gear its next to impossible to find another without comming to a stop. the beet trucks we have are normal trucks and I can find a gear no matter what, but we haul less than 100,000 pounds with them. I can put anybody in them and they do fine going up the gears but it takes some experiance to go down them. of course nowdays they have automatics in some of the trucks.

[big rockpile]

Had to go get a Truck one time.The Guy was hired,he couldn't shift gears.

My wife I just showed her how to shift and turned her loose.



big rockpile

[Slev]

..Not that I have anything against truckers, but I can't stand the fact that 'Ice Road Truckers" is actually on The History Channel, "Axe Men" as well, what are the program managers thinking..? It's the History Channel for cryin-out-loud...! Let's put some history on there and move those other shows over to Discovery or some other channel. that said, I'm glad you have your question answered, I was pondering the same thought...

[zant]

I think they're too busy being TV stars.. I drive 100k a yr and use my clutch when starting or stopping,that's it...

[mowrey1999]

I have drove about every combo out there 2 stick ,5x4 ,9-18 speed , tri axle dump trucks, doubles, triples, tankers in all 48 including B.C in winter an summer and never had the issues they have on that show , The one guy<Alex> couldnt even put on a set of chains on right and he was supposed to have been driving for years so , I have to believe its some sort of drama to make it look good for T.V ,The one guy who drove the tanker on 1 show doesnt have any problems and just makes his runs and goes home afterwords or waits for another load with no drama and Hugh thinks he,s making history every day according to him and is just an Idiot who can,t keep his log book up. Maybe get the girl a automatic for next season, and send her back to driving school for a refresher. I tried to watch the show ,but it makes me want to throw something thru the screen and knock them out of the drivers seat.

[Ed Norman]

Without the missed gears, there wouldn't have been anything exciting on that show. Two seasons with nobody going thru the ice, now another season driving on a road. I love how the camera trick makes the "roller coaster" look vertical. I checked, it is about a 6% grade.

[Wayne02]

I think you will find that every truck driver past and present thinks they are the greatest driver, never miss shifts etc, and that every other truck driver sucks. If you don't believe me, just ask them...

[Wis Bang]

I used to work for the US division of a French Canadian tank trucker. Their 'western' division was in Edmonton and they used Loran [pre GPS] to make deliveries to the oil rigs. Their Ops Mgr said the 'special' winter hoses snapped like matchtsticks @ -40 same as the regular ones...

We also had a few guys from a different company that was absorbed into ours and one of them was a 'real' ice road trucker. He ran back the Ice in the 60's...this guy chain smoked Player's 'Navy Cut' and his face was so wrinkled from the smoke and squinting against the snow reflected sun that they would never put his mug on TV...he would ruin the ratings for sure.

He used to walk around the lot in NJ when it was zero in a tee shirt laughing at the Putro Rican tank cleaners who were bundled up like Nanook of the North asking them what they would do when it was REALLY cold...

I had an owner operator from Conroe, NC who delivered to Thunder Bay, ON when it was -25 and his next trip thru Montreal he had an APU installed 'cause he didn't want to end up frozen...

Alex and the 'Bear' are wimps compared to the 'real' thing!

[Wis Bang]

Originally Posted by mowrey1999

Hugh thinks he,s making history every day according to him and is just an Idiot who can,t keep his log book up. Maybe get the girl a automatic for next season, and send her back to driving school for a refresher.

Canadians follow different Hours of Service regs and most don't run the US eough to understand our rules. Our Canadians that ran the US had to have a min 15 yrs seniority just to bid on the US...I had a ton of US drivers that could not follow the new rules and would tell me [during a safety meeting] that the examples [downloaded from the FMCSR web pages] were wrong. Same buttheads got me canned during the DOT audit...

I wonder how the auto shifts and automatics would hold up in the extream cold and constant running w/ chains...she sure could use an automatic...

I had a boss who described how he learned to drive a B Model w/ 5 X 4 'warclubs'. The one owner climed into the buddy seat and smacked his hands w/ a tire 'billy' every time he ground some...by the end of the day he could shift the two stick like a pro...The owner's brother told the Mack dealer he wouldn't buy a new Mack unless he removed the air seat and power steering as he wanted the driver to feel every bump the truck felt...too bad these 'old fashioned' truckers are all dead now...

[hunter63]

Y'all can say what you want, I think it's entertaining, and beat watching the same old stuff all the time.
Lets face it someone has figured out how to make a buck, by following truckers, loggers. crabbers, etc around.

Now if only I could figure out how to cash in on my job.
"Ace Ventura- HVAC tech to the Stars", comming soon, see what happens when Paris Hilton gets HOT!

[blufford]

Originally Posted by hunter63

Y'all can say what you want, I think it's entertaining, and beat watching the same old stuff all the time.
Lets face it someone has figured out how to make a buck, by following truckers, loggers. crabbers, etc around.

Now if only I could figure out how to cash in on my job.
"Ace Ventura- HVAC tech to the Stars", comming soon, see what happens when Paris Hilton gets HOT!

I find it unreal how each segment has a greenhorn who is usually abused and bullied by the regulars. That must be part of the drama that they are attempting.