Straight Dump Newbie

bed will come down without the PTO engaged.

Don't be one of those guys who drags his dump pile out, just watch in your mirror for when the load breaks and ease off the brakes; the loads inertia will coast you forward enough to keep the gate from digging in.

The only time you need to pull forward in gear would be dumping down hill, in that case you would wait for the load to break, push in the clutch and put it in gear, then pull forward a few feet to resume dumping.

 

I may have been responsible for the PTO neutral thing.

There is a presumption that the newbie will recieve instruction on how to dump spread down a driveway or on the move when it's time by his or her boss. In a Mack 15 speed super, I used 2nd gear for that because it seemed to be the closest gear to the one used by PTO in raising the bed.

The gate is super important. IN spreading down the drive way it is chained just so before you do it so it will spread.

This is also where you take out your first customer's cable TV if you have a choice between stopping or taking it out, don't stop or you will create a pile that requires excessive man hours to remedy.

 

I have no idea what you are saying here.

Dump truck beds do not use hydraulic pressure to come down, they use gravity. The only reason for the PTO to be engaged is to power the hydraulic pump so the bed can be raised, once the bed is raised the PTO is not needed because no pressure is needed.

Whether the hydraulic pump is controlled by a lever, an electric switch or an air switch is not relevant; when it is put in the down position the valve opens internally to allow the fluid to return to the tank as the weight of the box pushes the ram closed.

The PTO is not needed to lower a dump body.

 

We usually did it downhill. And we stayed in second all the way down, thats about roughly 4mph. maybe. If the first spread did not cover it all, there was a second truck ready to spread.

Once you start and that bed starts to come up in the lowest PTO raising, you cannot stop. If you did, PLOP. you just caused a hour or two of unnecessary shovel work.

 

My mack did not.

It will stay wherever angle it's at when you took the PTO out.

What you did do is make sure the #### thing is at idle ticking over very slowly and E A S E it down all the way.

You should have seen my first time. T H U M P!!!!! (*Begin marathon yelling that devolved into profanity and questioning my parentage) There is a awful lot of fluid that raises as well as takes away...