At about 4:30 from someone I recently met. She knew I burned firewood so she asks if I’m available last night as she knows where there’s some wood available if I want it.
I take her up on the offer and grab the trailer and head over to pick up her husband (who will load) at the site. On the way to his house, I notice there’s no light on the brake controller. Uh oh. I get to his house and wiggle the 7-pin and the controller fires up. That’s better but during some road tests and adjustments, there’s very little if any brakes on the trailer. We decide to go for it and just use the truck brakes.
We drive about 25 miles to the site and he loads the trailer without much issue. The minor issue was I asked him to slide the logs forward a bit for more tongue weight but when he pushed, the truck and trailer started sliding instead of the logs. It’s now dark.
On the drive back, we come over a hill and just over the crest is road construction with a huge backup of vehicles. It was all the brakes had to get me stopped but we did...
Now on back roads and the check engine light comes on in the truck. Gauges are good and nothing sounds or feels wrong so we proceed.
A few miles later, I catch one of the lights red. Pulled away and now we have a thump. Look in the passenger rear-view and we have smoke (and a lot of it) coming off the trailer tires. Pull over. Damn. Shredded tire. Luckily I brought a breaker bar, jack and spare tire.
I hit the lug nuts with Kroil before leaving which helped but pulling the lug nuts off was still a chore. He was pulling lugs off while I got the jack in place and started lifting. Uh oh, this 2-ton jack may not be enough to lift this axle. Lots of pressure on the handle and it did lift. We change the tire (which was still smoking and too hot to touch the rubber when we threw it in the truck bed.
We're now closer to home and the roads have bigger hills. Lots of manual shifting up and down the hills but we’re doing OK until we pass the airport and in one of the valleys is a flat bed loading a car, cop monitoring and flares everywhere. Crap... really need to slow down in this valley.
I now ponder getting home. I have 2 ways in. One has a steep downhill. No way I'm going down that one with trailer brakes not 100%. The other route has a steep uphill followed by a 3/4 mile downhill on a narrow road. Check engine light on so I’m thinking screw that (as well as pulling down the hill on my stone driveway with no brakes and not sure if the truck brakes/tires on stone would hold it back). I pulled the trailer into a parking lot and left there for the night.
Just went and got it, brought it home and all is now well.
OK, looking at the pic and the 2x8” floor boards, it looks like all 4 logs are between 20 & 24”. How much weight do you think I have there?
I take her up on the offer and grab the trailer and head over to pick up her husband (who will load) at the site. On the way to his house, I notice there’s no light on the brake controller. Uh oh. I get to his house and wiggle the 7-pin and the controller fires up. That’s better but during some road tests and adjustments, there’s very little if any brakes on the trailer. We decide to go for it and just use the truck brakes.
We drive about 25 miles to the site and he loads the trailer without much issue. The minor issue was I asked him to slide the logs forward a bit for more tongue weight but when he pushed, the truck and trailer started sliding instead of the logs. It’s now dark.
On the drive back, we come over a hill and just over the crest is road construction with a huge backup of vehicles. It was all the brakes had to get me stopped but we did...
Now on back roads and the check engine light comes on in the truck. Gauges are good and nothing sounds or feels wrong so we proceed.
A few miles later, I catch one of the lights red. Pulled away and now we have a thump. Look in the passenger rear-view and we have smoke (and a lot of it) coming off the trailer tires. Pull over. Damn. Shredded tire. Luckily I brought a breaker bar, jack and spare tire.
I hit the lug nuts with Kroil before leaving which helped but pulling the lug nuts off was still a chore. He was pulling lugs off while I got the jack in place and started lifting. Uh oh, this 2-ton jack may not be enough to lift this axle. Lots of pressure on the handle and it did lift. We change the tire (which was still smoking and too hot to touch the rubber when we threw it in the truck bed.
We're now closer to home and the roads have bigger hills. Lots of manual shifting up and down the hills but we’re doing OK until we pass the airport and in one of the valleys is a flat bed loading a car, cop monitoring and flares everywhere. Crap... really need to slow down in this valley.
I now ponder getting home. I have 2 ways in. One has a steep downhill. No way I'm going down that one with trailer brakes not 100%. The other route has a steep uphill followed by a 3/4 mile downhill on a narrow road. Check engine light on so I’m thinking screw that (as well as pulling down the hill on my stone driveway with no brakes and not sure if the truck brakes/tires on stone would hold it back). I pulled the trailer into a parking lot and left there for the night.
Just went and got it, brought it home and all is now well.
OK, looking at the pic and the 2x8” floor boards, it looks like all 4 logs are between 20 & 24”. How much weight do you think I have there?
