Sunday Morning Reminiscing and Rumination

[Chrisgb]

I have been guilty in the past for hijacking a topic, so rather than derailing “New Light and Medium Duty News,” I put this here where nobody will read it, but NL&MDN was the inspiration:

 

After leaving the car biz in 1996, I learned to drive semi in an ancient Ford CL9000 day cab, and I drove an ’81 Kenworth T200 single sleeper cabover on my first job (it had power steering!). Later I drove conventionals, all Paccars. I don’t know how a CL could be spec'ed in the late 70s but this one was quiet and very smooth, even pulling  an empty pup trailer; that CL was a quality truck. The T200 was pretty well worn out; bad had gasket and air compressor, but it had a turning radius like that of an Ottawa spotter. This was at a time when fleets were switching to all class 7 & 8 conventionals. I always yearned for that CL even toward the end of my career in 2019 driving late model 76 in. sleeper T680s, maybe because that CL was the first semi tractor that I ever drove, but that truck was sweet.

The “conventional” wisdom was that you’d be the first one at a crash in a COE, but isn’t the opposite true? Think about two trucks, a conventional and a COE, with the drivers’ eyes, not the front bumper, in the same plane. The are both traveling at exactly the same speed, both trucks are able to stop in 325 ft/100M. Suddenly, lightning hits a tree and it crashes perpendicular to the roadway 319 ft/98M ahead with no way around either side The COE would stop right at the tree, sustaining no damage, while the front of the conventional, having arrived a fraction of a second sooner, would hit the tree.

 

Moral of the story: The conventional pushed the tree out of the way just enough so that the COE could continue on and still make an on-time delivery,

while the conventional driver ran out of hours dealing with his damaged rig.

Safe Travels.