Brazilton KS | We pulled our big stock trailer with the semi tractor once. I expected it to just be the cat's meow. I was surprised at the complaint that it wouldn't stop. I drove it the last load. I had to think about it a little after driving it, because sure enough, it wouldn't stop worth a darn. Thinking about it made it clear...I had roughly 4ok gross, with 20k of it on the trailer axles. The tractor had 10k on the steering axle. That left 10k on the drive axles. The trailer brakes were not functioning. The steer axle had brakes for 12k. The drive axles had brakes for 34k. For some reason they quit putting bobtail valves on the steer axle of trucks. There was no way to make the brakes even remotely close to being balanced...it would slide the drivers without slowing down much. The next time we hauled, we put trailer on 1 ton with functioning brake control. It grosses around 35k this way. It without doubt will stop much shorter then the semi would. I would bet it will even stop shorter without the trailer brakes. That's my experience. If the trailer was set up to put weight on the tractor, it would make a big difference, but a gooseneck is set up to go on a truck with no more then 10k rear axle capacity. |