And I bet he checks he has locked the door sixty eight times before he goes into the rec room for his jello…
Being tenacious is not a good thing in people with limited mental resources…
bobthedog:
And I bet he checks he has locked the door sixty eight times before he goes into the rec room for his jello…Being tenacious is not a good thing in people with limited mental resources…
He has to ask the superintendant to check that the door is locked 
All that scratching is making me itch!!! 
bobthedog:
Carryfast:
By the way of course it’s all about road damage because that’s the idea of low axle weightsbut you can’t use the princible of a heavy drive axle in that case.
Erm, WTF are you burbling about now? Doesn’t make any difference what the weight of the axle is, only the weight imposed by it. In the US, the weight per twin wheeled axle is 17000 lbs, 34000 for a tandem. That is the same for trailer axles and drive axles. So 15422 kgs, for the tandem!
No Mark, he is really a bit strange.
Gross axle weights (which is the context of what I was referring to by the term ‘heavy drive axle’) actually means the weight imposed by them 
and if the unit is a 6x2 it does’nt actually fit the definition of a having a ‘tandem’ (double drive) rear axle set up in this context at all.Even at best it’s always going (designed) to be one relatively heavily loaded (drive) axle and one relatively lightly loaded (undriven) axle unless you’re going to try to run a fully freighted 6x2 artic outfit,with it’s trailer axles,it’s drive axle,and it’s undriven rear unit axle each loaded up at the same weight (17,000lbs) (and the worrying thing is I think that you might just be brainwashed by your typical British thinking to do that) in the middle of a North American winter,if those yanks are ever stupid enough to listen to newmercman and change their whole fleet over to 6x2 tractor units .But at least newmercman would actually probably have the ‘sense’ to dump all the weight off of that undriven rear unit axle,just as fly sheet and all the other 6x2 fans said,which of course transfers it onto the drive axle,which gives the required traction,which he ‘would’ have got with his old double drive set up.‘But’ with his old double drive axles he would’nt have put any of his axles over 17,000lbs unlike with his ‘new improved’ 6x2 unit and ‘if’ they had’nt have listened to his great fuel saving idea that is and got rid of all the double drive trucks. 
That’s until one day the DOT decide to ask a few questions as to the exact gross weight of that single drive axle (a lot more than 17,000 lbs 
) when they realise that is what the thing is running with instead of a ‘proper’ tandem (double drive) rear axle set up. But I’m not surprised that you think that anyone with a bit of common sense and intelligence is a ‘bit strange’. If only you knew it this post contains all you need to know about the flaw in the princible of the 6x2 axle configuration.It’s just that it takes a ‘bit’ of common sense and intelligence to understand it.
You are saying you have commonsense?
OK, just so you know, I used to run 3 vehicles of my own. I had a 4x2 on steel, running 40 tonnes, a 4x2 on air running 40 tonnes and a 6x2 midlift running 44 tonnes. Believe it or not, I do know what I am doing a bit, and I am aware of the benefits and pitfalls of all of the above, as well as the 6x4s.
They have the twin drive because they do. It has nothing to do with my preference or choice, and has nothing to do with neing brainwashed. I suspect that the shock treatments you probably get in the asylum are more likely to do that.
if you punctuated your lengthy paragraphs, you may make more sense… No, probably not…
bobthedog:
You are saying you have commonsense?
OK, just so you know, I used to run 3 vehicles of my own. I had a 4x2 on steel, running 40 tonnes, a 4x2 on air running 40 tonnes and a 6x2 midlift running 44 tonnes. Believe it or not, I do know what I am doing a bit, and I am aware of the benefits and pitfalls of all of the above, as well as the 6x4s.
They have the twin drive because they do. It has nothing to do with my preference or choice, and has nothing to do with neing brainwashed. I suspect that the shock treatments you probably get in the asylum are more likely to do that.
if you punctuated your lengthy paragraphs, you may make more sense… No, probably not…
So what was the drive axle weights at 40t gross and 44t gross on those units compared to what the yanks would allow (17,000lbs) The costs in road repairs and stuck wagons here in the winter probably costs more than it would cost to give us the lower fuel taxes to make up for the extra consumption of running lighter drive axles with double drive.
Carryfast when the air is dumped from the rear lift or if we are on steel lets say its hydraulically transfered by a ram,then if your fully freighted then you will firstly be overloaded on your drive & secondly will have difficulty steering at any speed. I did however drive an F12 A-ride home from Belarusse where incidently the gross weight is or was 36t with the rear axle ram siezed in the up stroke with 20t of timber on, it was on steel though I would’nt have made it back on air. I was awfully unpopular when the headlamps went on though 
Most vehicles in the UK are specced not to lift with weight on but this can be overode on the vehicles computer if you run them off road IE forestry, muckaway etc.
I fully agree with newmercman The Yanks are basically stupid running highway trucks as 6x4’s but your not going to change the minds of those boys anytime soon. I’m sure them running 6x2’s would help save the planet. I have driven interstate with a 6x4 & found it wholly unecessary if I’m honest even on the Canadian dirt roads, but that was in the summer months thankfully. As for the ice roads across lakes I’ll have to take Bobs word for it the nearest I’ve done is The Russian planes in 30 below on packed ice in a 6x2, I do remember a 6x4 Czech truck getting blown off the road in front of me though, thats food for thought on the ice point Bob.
As for weight I’ve had 3 A-rides which is Volvos name for them or was in our day anyway & they’ve all been 10t plus tractors so if your drooling after payload your best off looking elsewhere & thinking on they’ve only got 1 diff unlike your 6x4 monsters. The rear bogie on one of these however is only 19t buy design hence them being no good once the 70t mark is up. Which is where your “■■■■■” over 6x4’s comes into play carryfast as most have a 26t rear bogie by design & even 33t on hub reduction axles.
I have been on site here & seen 6x4’s struggle like ■■■■ & I’ve been able to scramble out past them & in all honesty unless your on site 24/7 or on the tip theres no need for double drive end of.
fly sheet:
Carryfast when the air is dumped from the rear lift or if we are on steel lets say its hydraulically transfered by a ram,then if your fully freighted then you will firstly be overloaded on your drive & secondly will have difficulty steering at any speed. I did however drive an F12 A-ride home from Belarusse where incidently the gross weight is or was 36t with the rear axle ram siezed in the up stroke with 20t of timber on, it was on steel though I would’nt have made it back on air. I was awfully unpopular when the headlamps went on thoughI fully agree with newmercman The Yanks are basically stupid running highway trucks as 6x4’s but your not going to change the minds of those boys anytime soon. I’m sure them running 6x2’s would help save the planet. I have driven interstate with a 6x4 & found it wholly unecessary if I’m honest even on the Canadian dirt roads, but that was in the summer months thankfully. As for the ice roads across lakes I’ll have to take Bobs word for it the nearest I’ve done is The Russian planes in 30 below on packed ice in a 6x2, I do remember a 6x4 Czech truck getting blown off the road in front of me though, thats food for thought on the ice point Bob.
As for weight I’ve had 3 A-rides which is Volvos name for them or was in our day anyway & they’ve all been 10t plus tractors so if your drooling after payload your best off looking elsewhere & thinking on they’ve only got 1 diff unlike your 6x4 monsters. The rear bogie on one of these however is only 19t buy design hence them being no good once the 70t mark is up. Which is where your “■■■■■” over 6x4’s comes into play carryfast as most have a 26t rear bogie by design & even 33t on hub reduction axles.
I have been on site here & seen 6x4’s struggle like [zb] & I’ve been able to scramble out past them & in all honesty unless your on site 24/7 or on the tip theres no need for double drive end of.
Long post but it does’nt answer the question of how would the yanks keep within their 17,000lbs axle weight limits and still have decent traction with a 6x2 when they’re fully freighted and a few inches of snow here is usually enough to stop a 4x2 let alone a 6x2 even at our allowed drive axle weights.Having driven 6x4’s even in British conditions there’s no substitute which is why the Highways Agency still spec 6x4 for motorway gritters that never go ‘offroad’.
More that anything else, John, the dual drive is really handy for getting on and off the lakes, and when the bush roads are really pushing the compensators beyond their design. Apart from that, it is not really worthwhile. But they have them here and have no intention to change so it makes no difference.
I will ask the chicken chaser if he can remember the heavy haul weights and dimensions later. He did that stretch for the Edmonton mob so he may know.
I liked my 6x2. The airlift should have been adjusted for tank work but it was a great truck. Even if the US were to build trucks, keeping the dual wheels and having the other axle just for weight but on compensators linked to the drive, that would be good, but they don’t… So Carryfast is right and all the manufacturers out here are wrong…
Same can be said of the fact that they like straightforward artics here. I reckon that the western states would give him big wet dreams since there are lots of A frames out there, but that thought is too much for me to bear. And Carryfast, if you had ever actually seen some of the US drivers in snow, they can get anything stuck, believe me. I saw one driver chain up 4 axles when we were all in a queue in 8" of snow. I didn’t chain anything and still got away.
The Yanks could stll have there 17000lb axles its just only one would be driven its simple or am I missing something here? I cant quite remember the formula but 19t rear bogie as opposed to 34000lbs would seem somewhat doable to me.
I’ve seen plenty of 4x2 salt spreaders here carryfast & am starting to think your splitting hairs now Chap, I understand you’d probably want these removed from service as they have way too little traction to be any use whatsoever.
Have you never seen a tri drive yet ? That would get you real hard I’m sure there’d be no more talk of 6x4’s if you had seen these beauties whining along with roasting diffs & the faint whiff of gear oil.
Apologies for the long post too, I actually thought you may want an opinion & a little input.
Fly sheet
I think a single drive axle, or maybe just 4x2s are 20000lbs, but not sure. Having a non driven axle makes sense for highway work, but they don’t. They only allow 34000lb bogies and that is all they want. I suspect it is as much to do with keeping more trucks moving than anything else, but the roads don’t suffer as much so it works both ways.
Yes, I should have thought of getting him a pic of a tri drive. He could ask the asylum to print it off so he had something to dream about…
Why apologise for the long post, John? Yours made sense. His don’t, even when they are 3 words long…
I don’t doubt it comes in handy getting on or off Bob. I had a mail from Chicken George in the week he’s telling me he loves it, fair play to him I reckon, I’m sure if he gets fed up he’ll be over the road again in a flash. Yer man Carryfast does’nt seem to want any real input from what I can see, my 6x2 is costing enough to run never mind if it had another diff jeez with fuel knocking £1.04ppl plus the dreaded I’m fairly sure his 6x4 philsophy is’nt really going to take a hold here. I think he needs to be over your side of the pond really now he’s bringing The Highways Agency gritters into the thread. I dunno what the ■■■■ I’m going to do I’m off to Invergordon tomorrow in what now seems a wholly inadequate single drive yoke 
Do you think I’ll get there
Cooper
This is carryfurther’s new motor 
Forget lift axles, in this case less is more…
That will stop them bloody bikers laughing at my new Trike
Wheel Nut:
This is carryfurther’s new motor
Nice 1 Wheel Nut I doubt I’d argue with that trike!!! 
Carryfast:
fly sheet:
Carryfast when the air is dumped from the rear lift or if we are on steel lets say its hydraulically transfered by a ram,then if your fully freighted then you will firstly be overloaded on your drive & secondly will have difficulty steering at any speed. I did however drive an F12 A-ride home from Belarusse where incidently the gross weight is or was 36t with the rear axle ram siezed in the up stroke with 20t of timber on, it was on steel though I would’nt have made it back on air. I was awfully unpopular when the headlamps went on thoughI fully agree with newmercman The Yanks are basically stupid running highway trucks as 6x4’s but your not going to change the minds of those boys anytime soon. I’m sure them running 6x2’s would help save the planet. I have driven interstate with a 6x4 & found it wholly unecessary if I’m honest even on the Canadian dirt roads, but that was in the summer months thankfully. As for the ice roads across lakes I’ll have to take Bobs word for it the nearest I’ve done is The Russian planes in 30 below on packed ice in a 6x2, I do remember a 6x4 Czech truck getting blown off the road in front of me though, thats food for thought on the ice point Bob.
As for weight I’ve had 3 A-rides which is Volvos name for them or was in our day anyway & they’ve all been 10t plus tractors so if your drooling after payload your best off looking elsewhere & thinking on they’ve only got 1 diff unlike your 6x4 monsters. The rear bogie on one of these however is only 19t buy design hence them being no good once the 70t mark is up. Which is where your “■■■■■” over 6x4’s comes into play carryfast as most have
Long post but it does’nt answer the question of how would the yanks keep within their 17,000lbs axle weight limits and still have decent traction with a 6x2 when they’re fully freighted
For the week of bad weather we have in the uk it hardly makes sense to reequip the whole uk haulage fllet to double drives i can understand a gritter been speced as a 6x4 as
1 they are generaly based on a tipper chassis
2 they can realy find themselves in tricky places
3 the milleage they cover they are not going to use loads of fuel anyway.
Was on the landfill at rainham today and it was rough due to the weather and the double drives were strugling through under there own steam and one driver turned up in a daf xf with a tag and only had to get pulled back the last 20 feet back and that was realy rough so if it can cope on a bad landfill it shows its good enough for highway driving.
As for the 6x2 getting stuck in the uks half inch of snow my opinion is alot of it is due to drivers not been trained and made worse by the use of autos in the last few years
Any single axle is allowed to run at 20000lbs, even the steer axle, as long as the tyres are suitable for the weight, that’s federal law, off the interstates & federal highways you may get into some bother, but then again there are no scales so…
Crazyfast, check out Mesilla Valley Transport, they have around a thousand trucks…all of them 6x2, they run out of New Mexico and spend a lot of time in the Rockies, where they get a lot of snow, their trucks are not even rear lift, they only have an air dump on the tag, oh yeah and they run super singles on the drive axle, never see them at the side of the road in the winter
You may also want to check out the ‘slice of life’ program run by Freightliner (the biggest truck manufacturer in Nth America) it follows four new Freightliner Cascadias, the trucks are straight from the production line, at least one of them runs the same set up as MVT
newmercman:
Any single axle is allowed to run at 20000lbs, even the steer axle, as long as the tyres are suitable for the weight, that’s federal law, off the interstates & federal highways you may get into some bother, but then again there are no scales so…Crazyfast, check out Mesilla Valley Transport, they have around a thousand trucks…all of them 6x2, they run out of New Mexico and spend a lot of time in the Rockies, where they get a lot of snow, their trucks are not even rear lift, they only have an air dump on the tag, oh yeah and they run super singles on the drive axle, never see them at the side of the road in the winter
You may also want to check out the ‘slice of life’ program run by Freightliner (the biggest truck manufacturer in Nth America) it follows four new Freightliner Cascadias, the trucks are straight from the production line, at least one of them runs the same set up as MVT
I was’nt saying that fly sheet’s post was too long only that it was a bit short on answers to the axle weights versus traction question.Anyway we’ve now got some more figures which show the even the yanks seem to be losing the plot with a steer axle with the same potential weight capacity as a single drive axle . But I’m betting,that even with a single drive axle at 20,000 lbs,that’s still too light for a fully freighted 36 tonner and they’d still need to increase that in a lot of euro conditions let alone North American ones which is probably what the air dump is for on the undriven axle .Which just gets back to the fact that the only way to make a 6x2 work reliably,in all types of conditions,is to run it as,what is effectively,a 4x2 with a heavier drive axle.Which just shows the difference in thinking between the idea of running a six wheeler tractor unit,pulling a 53 foot semi,with a gross combination weight of less than 40 tonnes,but axle weights which can be anything up to 20,000lbs,but might possibly,effectively,be even more.Whereas my idea would be an outfit of around the same overall length,but with more payload space,and around twice as much payload weight capacity,but with lower axle weights,and which would be more manouvreable than either a euro spec artic let alone a yank spec one.All done by the simple idea of coupling up a yank spec 6x4 rigid to a euro spec 45 foot semi using a dolly.What price that fuel saving made by using that 6x2 yank tractor unit now. 
But maybe that provides a good idea for what could be done with those old spec unwanted cab over 6x4 tractor units,by converting at least one of them into a rigid if the LHV idea ever gets off the ground here.
Wheel Nut:
This is carryfurther’s new motor
No that’s the new uk gritter fleet after the public sector cutbacks.
I find myself unable to read any more than half your posts, Carpingfast. I seem to almost get dyslexia from them, or maybe it is just your words I struggle to see. Or maybe it is just a strong case of deja vu since we have seen it all from you many times.
Tell you what, try selling your idea over here. I would feel sure you would find a warm welcome, especially in the south. Or do they not burn heretics here… I forget…
John, the 6x4 is good going on and off the lakes because of the shoreline rises. Having both axles driven means you have a better chance. Chicken Chaser is happy because he is able to get fed, watered and the other when he gets home, the lucky sod…