Tug test EVERYTIME u start rolling

Tug test isn't enough. I high hooked a trailer once and it passed the tug test. But when you hopped out to crank the landing gear up and glance under the trailer you could put about a deck and a half of cards on the 5th wheel without touching the trailer.

 

Go go under there and take a look....also, don't piss off people at the truck stop. They can be quite petty.

 

Stretch your rig before you leave it, check it when you come back.....

 

You can also park with the tractor pulling against the trailer, which will usually make pulling the handle impossible.

 

I go back and forth 2x. Raise gear. Roll forward and use handle 2x. And roll

 

Tug test is for lazy trucker. Always visually inspect proper coupling has been performed. No substitutions. If a driver relied on a tug test on my preemployment drive. Instant fail.

 

I’m paranoid about not being hooked, I use a high powered flash light and go under and look. I’ve seen three trailers in intersections slide off the truck and in one case flip over by drivers who thought they were hooked since I’ve been OTR. One driver went like two miles, high hooked before it broke away. Tug test is good for like when you come back to your truck after you went inside a truck stop or something like that in case someone had pulled your pin. But for the original hooking up to that trailer you better go look every time.

 

I can cause a 5th wheel/trailer to look perfectly coupled, have 10 drivers look at whatever they want to look at, and the trailer will slide off the tractor. I can even show how to fix that problem. In 5 seconds. It comes down to trying to a hook a trailer that is dropped slightly too high. When I dealt with 6-12 trailers per night for 18 years (32,400 - 64,800 trailers) you see and learn certain things you might not when you hook one trailer per day or drag the same trailer for a week or months at a time.

A visual inspection is not reliable. The goal is the trailer doesn't slide off the tractor, not the jaws look like they should. Pulling against the trailer demonstrates the connection is solid, and not just looks like it should look. The gold standard is visual inspection AND tug test. If any driver has ever hooked to a trailer and the 5th wheel won't latch, no matter how many times you back into the trailer or how hard you back into the trailer, the locking jaws will look latched but they won't hold when you start driving. Lots of driver's first instinct is to get a stick or piece of trash and try to push or pull on one or both locking jaws. Instead, pull and hold the 5th wheel release handle all the way out for 5 seconds and the jaws will reset due to spring tension in the mechanism.

 

Probably even more important with the cold weather coming in.