Having just spend a month in the land of the free, I was bewildered to see that just about all the trucks on the interstate where single trailers (the only odd ones out where the UPS trucks pulling a short trailer and pulling another short trailer, also I did see a couple of B doubles in the north of Texas hauling grain). How come there are no B doubles in the US? I would have thought that the interstates are a natural place for long trucks to roam. BTW after the success of B doubles here we are starting to introduce B triples for some routes.
One state in this fine country allows a version of what you are calling B doubles. The UPS trucks you see pulling two short trailers are common nation wide, but if memory serves me right, they not allowed any more weight than any other trailer on the road. Some states have sections of highway called "turnpikes" where they are allowed to pull triples, but im not sure on weight. If you want to see real doubles action, you have to visit Mi. We have an odd ball set up that we call Short Doubles. They are usually a quad axle dump truck, that also have a six axle dump trailer. For the most part though, we run a lead, followed by a pup. Depending on the axle configurations, you can gross out at 164,000lbs.
dumb question but, do you have to unhook the trailers in order to dump the front one? Pj
Not sure about over there but in Australia gennerally they are setup so you can jackknife the trailer. Nick
Hi Hendrik,glad to see you made it to land of the free mate.The double & triple type riggs are open country " flat lander" style trucks.In parts of the US they work fine ,in my area they keep the wrecker service busy with all the narrow roads & steep hills we have.It's pretty much all relative....It's not how much youre hauling,It's where the load has to go mate
The tongues are not long enough to jackknife and dump. Most of the time we do break apart to dump. It only adds 5 minutes to each dump, depending on the driver, some can do it in no time flat. It is a small price to pay for being able haul such loads. A lot of the time, our hauls are 20 miles one way, so 40 mile round trips take time, and doing so with half a truck would add a lot of trucks to the road. There are times you can dump while connected. I have had these trucks tailgate sand, or gravel while connected. The driver has to be on top of things so he does not get stuck. These trucks do have a tendency to get stuck, when you turn a tractor off road, it takes all the weight off the drives. Push blocks are standard equipment on these trucks, and pushing with a loader or dozer is and every day occurrence.
Last summer I drove a tandem axle dump truck with a tandem axle converter and a full length gravel trailer after I dumped the trailer I would jackknife and then dump the tandem. With this configuration I could haul up to 57,000kg gvw. If I pulled a tridem dump trailer I could haul up to 62,500kg gvw which is maximum gvw in this province. The company I worked for now has I've heard two or three units like that. They're a little shorter than the 'B' trains we had so I could get into slightly tighter places, but in the end I think I like the sidedump better as a lead trailer since I couldn't see what's happening with the pintle hitch when I would jackknife and sometimes that caused problems with my airlines snagging on something and rupturing. Plus I was frequently hauling something called VMA sand for an asphalt plant which was like fine beach sand and it was pretty easy to get bogged down or I would have to drag the converter through a little bit of the sand pile if it was a tight plant site.
There are some cool combinations but it does not answer my question as to why B doubles are not used on line haul operations? I saw all these single trailer trucks, with I guess between 400 and 500hp pulling 36 tonnes, even our single trailer trucks pull 42.5 tonnes. Makes no sense to me in this era where the government is calling for tighter emission controls and ways of reducing fuel use.
I think it's more the bridge laws than anything else... I see lots of double and triples on the turnpike... but they are usually broken down to singles once they leave the turnpike...there are usually someone there making up a set to get on the pike... The small 20 footers will run the normal roads...as doubles Ups runs a 20/40 combo and 20/20/20 on the turnpike You see double combines during harvest on the turnpike... quite the site... they are on 2 lowboys... i don't know the length but they are long... there is a fuel truck here that runs something like a 40/20 don't know the exact lengths of the fuel truck The turnpike also stops/restricts movement of the doubles or triples in high wind... they have monitors that measure the wind and stuff Another thing that cuts down on the long distance trucks is the railroad...
How's this for an abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz doubles train
seeing a lot more of theses setups here in aus, i call them stag trailers, some people b trains and so on.... no need to unhook to dump, in and out in no time
. Looks like the doubles train is running short of the N Trailer.
@marty the little dump trailer pictured... is common here but usually behind a tandem or triaxle dump truck... also the tongue is about 25 to 30 feet long... bridge laws dictate the required spacing...
N trailer? the state they are running thru doesn't allow N trailers
Mostly because there's a big public movement against heavier and longer trucks.
slightly different concept though heavy, these are designed no to be un hooked (they can be ya wanted) and they're designed to be more of a space saving trailer, if you set these up with a cab over (we used K104B and K108 kenworths), and keep them to 19 metres you can used them on roads with only single trailer (tri axel) access while still having a bogie b double payload
this is a photo of a pup that is used around here...There's probably another 3 to 4 foot more tongue... They jack knife to dump... usually I have seen several hauling asphalt.... but they dump the pup ... park unhook.. then dump the truck...
How far do ya'll haul over there though? Hauls are kept short around here I see more truck and pups in the rual areas where thay have a longer haul. In Socal they have trucks and pups called Transfers. The truck drops the trailer dumps its load then transfers the box off the the trailer to the truck to dump. There pretty fast too. Things very a lot from area to area here in the states.
the ones i posted were hauling close to 200km, but we regulary hauled up to 400km with those, we had these, regular b doubles, single tri axles and road trains, and hauls from 50km up to 1000km
Road trains mainly go from Adelaide to Darwin and Perth, with B doubles going between every capital city and stops in between, B triples have to stick to roads where they are allowed.
Except for some turnpikes throughout the US, the max GCVWR isn't high enough to justify B-trains even the shorts one that are run on between the cities down there. Canada and Australia both run B doubles up to 140,000lbs, a full 60,000lbs more than the interstate cap and 10,500lbs more than the interstate's designed limit. The Kansas Turnpike bumps the gross to 120,000lbs, but they also allow vehicles to 120ft so anyone wanting to pay for all the axles just runs 2 48' vans with a single or tandem dolly between them. There isn't enough continuous road where B-doubles could be used at present to give a good return on investment.
73 bucks to run 9 axles... 236 miles on the Kansas turnpike... they do show up to 12 axles but no rate scale I don't know what the fuel difference is between 2 tractors versus 1.... but paying for that extra driver for 6 hours must be the deal maker...
I've noticed the pay scale going to 12 without prices too. If i remember correctly a turnpike double/b-train will drop less than 1mpg compared to a 80K truck. Another plus has to be maintaining half as many trucks. I think a large part of why the Truck Size and Weight Freeze hasn't been lifted is special interest groups "protecting" jobs. If you ask me, any boost in productivity will produce a surplus of jobs. I really need to polish the paper i wrote and link it again.
Well my figuring was that at the loading docks they are not set up for B doubles, most general freight B doubles here are curtain sided, I noticed that the US trucks all just about have solid sides, meaning you un/load them from the back. I don't understand the concept of gross vehicle weight, what are they scared of? That a truck can't brake as quick? ABS is standard on B doubles now, you have an extra 2 or 3 axles braking. Job protection? From what I understand the US has the same problem as Oz, insofar as not being able to attract enough drivers to fill the shortfall, which is one of the reasons why B doubles have become popular, that and the extra efficiencies gained by having one truck pulling more weight. Back when single trailers where the norm, the average truck had 350hp, now that is closer to 500 with B doubles and road trains.
Don't forget North America also has a well established rail network, we really don't need to double up like that.
You may not believe it but Oz has a choo choo or two as well but some freight is better on trucks, particularly time sensitive stuff. Another thing is the environmental issue, you have the politicians jumping up and down about industry reducing emissions and I would have thought reducing emissions per tonne shifted would be an area that could be looked at. BTW what is the average engine output of those single trailer units? Anyway it seems that it's a case of "my daddy did it like this, so I'll do it like this and when the youngens take over they'll be doing it like this as well". Perhaps NASA will have to come up with a B double space shuttle to make it pay
Hey Hendrik can you post some pics of the trucks you guys have in Australia I've seen the shows on t.v. with the massive road trains, but I would like to see some pictures of "ordinary" trucks like gravel trucks, van trailers, lowbeds etc. And what kind of axle weight and g.v.w.'s are you allowed on your roads? Here in Canada I think the maximum at least before special permits is 63,500kg, but here in the province of Manitoba it's 62,500kg. For us the governing factor is winter and what frost does to roads, plus how we build roads for example in my home province the department of holidays (highways) always builds on the cheap and does the worst maintenance possible like spreading asphalt with a grader and trying to pack it with a truck or with the same grader. lol Hence why I bought a four-wheel drive pick up truck last fall.
Must have the same hiway dept:Banghead
Actually I think your roadtrains look really cool.... Figures for the choo choo... 1980.... 240 tons per mile per gallon of fuel... 2000.... 390 tons per mile per gallon of fuel... one rock quarry has railed their rock here for years from Oklahoma Now a quarry that is EVEN closer is also going to start railing it's rock into the area ... this quarry is about 90 miles away... so if a train can get almost 400 tons here with 90 gallons of fuel AND IF a truck hauls 25 tons at the same 90 gallons.... say 1500 gallons to haul the 400 tons Will the savings be passed to consumer ...NO...
Some info here: The point about the bridge rules and the rail network is the most pertinent to this topic. Australia's rail network is, in terms of general freight, just about as useful as cancer of the testicles. The big tonne-age shifted on rail is mining specific and not open to general freight. getting a vehicle transported East West takes over a week on rail and costs a bomb. A truck will do it under 3 days at half the cost. Our rail network is just not up to it and not extensive enough to compete with trucks.
A couple of pics here:
That log trailer is way cool... Sound like our rail systems are opposite.... they put almost everything on rail cars here... sadly for the most part it's made in China or where ever overseas... even secret government stuff... that could be the biggest hazard in the world yet rides unmarked as for the actual costs ...don't know... They are trying to build a new intermodal terminal around Kansas City... But it's a not in my backyard fight at the moment... I've even unloaded water line pipe from flat cars...
we even have a some kind of armed government transport... don't know what they haul... but they are armed to the teeth... bullet proof glass... usually run in a group of 3 tractor trailers....with 3 or 4 Suburbans The last ones I saw... the tractors were Marmons the picture is just one I googled
LOL; Thats Blackwater or Xe surving your contry at home! Same prosedure as in Iraq...
Actually the rail cars are built either in the States or in Canada they are not built in China. China still uses Steam locomotives. Our diesels are built by EMD (Electro Motives Division) or by General Electric. Some smaller hybrid type locomotives are also built on this side of the pond.
Whoops! I meant that the goods they haul are made in chiner... I have noticed that grain cars say built in mexico...
Maybe in the States, but Canadian Wheat Board cars were made in the good ol' Dominion of Canada. :canada
This explains the basic load limits http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/heavyvehicles/downloads/heavyveh-mass0706.pdf Your basic single trailer semi is 42.5 with a bogie-tri combination, which is the most popular in Australia, B double and triples depend on axle configurations but bogie-tri-tri is usually the go. So that is 6 tonnes on the steer, 16.5 tonnes drive bogie, 20 tonnes first axle group and 20 tonnes on the last axle group, giving 62.5 tonnes for a B double and 82.5 for a B triple. On some light weight operations the use bogies on the A trailer and B trailer, such as courier trucks or car transporters. From memory the maximum weight of a road train is 120 tonnes unless it is on private roads. Now for another question, why do the semi trailers in the US run a bogie axle set up, instead of tri? American truckers don't like checking air pressures?
Save tires...you will see flat and dumps running empty with a single axle on the ground.. plus some run the micheln super single... even fuel tanker tractor trailers run the super single... they are 17" wide and rated for 10200 pound each...
Actually, steam engines are becoming more and more rare in China. The majority of their locomotives are now diesel and electric.
That may be but the fact that they're used for general freight as opposed to hauling around rail fans like me is still something. Thanks for pics Hendrik.
Sigh, it's all about the regulations. For example in Illinois on non federal roads a normally spaced tri will gain you nothing over a 5 foot spread tandem and only 2000 lbs. over a normal spread tandem. Having the tri axle way back from the other two and I think you pick up 6000 lbs. total. And with a semi, you're always banging up against a total vehicle gross of 73,280 lbs. Other states allow more or less. Wisconsin just across the border will let you gross 80,000 lbs. on a straight truck with more axles but still limits a semi to 73,280. It's a mish mash of conflicting regs. Anti truck feelings run high and attempts to rationalize things have been failing to pass for years .
not to mention that the roads were built on the cheap in the first place and things havent improved up here in pothole country there were a few roads this spring that were toataling mulitiple cars a day from hitting road craters this too is 100% poilitics no matter how you cut it you know i think if it was legal i am certain without a doubt that we would truck the same as OZ
I just got back from Alaska and it's common for the trucks to run with 2 - 40 foot trailers. Boxes, flats, tankers and even mixed, a box with a flat. (I like Ice Road Truckers and stopped and had my picture taken at Carlise Trucking in Fairbanks )
Instead of black suburbans or humvees following these loads, they're now being followed by for very large men in white E-450 ford Winnebago's. Because when i go on a road trip with my four buddies i always follow a Armored marmon, dress all in black tactical clothing and never take my eyes off the truck in front of me. :beatsme Also they DO NOT screw around with security on the trucks or trailers, friend of mine was in the trailer repair business, Got a call from the DOD that they had a trailer that "needed repair immediately" and that "they would pay whatever it took to get the trailer back on the road ASAP, including working 24hrs till it was rolling again. Armed guards watched the guys work for 32 hrs strait to repair the very heavily reinforced top rail on the trailer. It had cracked in the middle from the fact that whatever they were transporting in the box was suspended dead center of the box by slings and straps and was VERY heavy. Also USAC has a fleet of trucks that are very stealthy up armored peterbilt areo trucks and new volvo VNs. Also the reason im AGAINST the higher weights for regular OTR transports is if they raise the weights I ASSURE YOU that the rates will stay the same if not FALL. the extra wear and tear and equipment investment for the higher weights will co completely un rewarded.
I am not in the trucking biz but what I do know is we have "bridge" laws here. GVW is just that. I know in Oregon and Washington state you see Bdubs often and triples along the I-5 areas. Three pups, I think 27 or 28 footers. My truckin pals call em wiggle wagons.... Just follow one and you will know why. here in cali we have length and weight laws and the trucks are maxed out on 5 axles from what I have been taught.
These are for moving nuclear warheads to be dismantled.
We got A-train's up here in Canada it's 2 53' foot Trailers. We got b-train's too. Kyle:canada
wish i had seen these trailers a few years ago before i followed one for 2 hours just see how they dumped. i was a vacation out west and kept seeing them. so i to see it