Chains Optional

Health takes priority over money, and chaining up is a lot healthier than just pushing a button.

Assuming of course you don't throw your back out, sprain a wrist, get hit by a vehicle passing by, or slip on the ice and crack your skull open.

I do love this debates we have sometimes!

Me too!

Brett, you sound like a regular homesteader! Much respect.

Indeed I am! Old School and Starcar also! Old school and I have some photos in TruckingTruth's Photo Gallery of animals and the like. If we could teach Starcar to use a camera she'd have a bunch too! I have my fingers crossed!

I'm excited as can be about springtime coming around. Friday I get my first set of 15 chickens. I just went today and spoke to the dairy farmer I get my calves from. I should have two calves before the end of April. It's a ton of fun. This year I'm going to get my tinyfarmlife.com blog updated and take a bunch of pictures. It's a lot of fun.

That's awesome! My wife composts and started a garden last year. She's big into canning and is looking forward to sending me off w/ food once I get my own truck. She's getting ready to learn how to pressure can so she can preserve meats. Ultimately we'd love to grow all of our own veggies and perhaps get some chickens and a goat. I'd personally love to get some pigs - pork is my favorite type of meat. We try to support farm cooperatives. A local farm has the best red beets.

I'll have to keep my eye out for your other website and show it to my wife. Do you hunt?

Do you hunt?

Nope, I've never hunted. Don't really have a reason why. It just never really appealed to me. I always wanted to grow and raise my own food. Of course out where I live everyone seems to hunt. But I guess once you've raised your own chicken, turkey, and beef and you can produce the highest quality all natural meats on the planet the idea of eating some stringy, gamey, lean deer just sounds unappealing. And the "sport" side of hunting doesn't really appeal to me either so I stay home and raise my own animals.

My wife composts and started a garden last year.

Awesome!!!! I spend a ton of time in the garden. I raise two steers every year and put down about 8-12 inches of composted manure in the spring, till it in, and grow a garden that would make Martha Stewart proud. If you can get your hands on some cow manure there's nothing on Earth that produces better veggies. Of course your wife might be repulsed by handling it, and I totally understand. But there's nothing better.

Automatic chains? How cool is that?

Daniel, don't be such a doofus, man if I could have a flat-bed rig with automatic chains, a switch to flip that would stretch my tarps out and bungee them down, an automatic strap roller, and an auto-pilot button, I'd be sitting back there in the sleeper raking in some serious cash while devoting my time to helping youngsters like you learn how to break into the new and exciting world of automated truck driving!

Just so you know, you would have to have those new fangled gadgets on the trailers too, otherwise you'll be getting the exercise Dr. Daniel is recommending you get (tractor AND trailers are required to chain in a California chain control). Also, when the chain restriction requires duel drivers be chained up that machine won't qualify because it only lays down the chains under the inside duel (unless they make a model with longer chains). Now, anyone interested in commenting on the question at the beginning and middle of this thread? What about chaining up when it ain't mandatory? Anyone due it just for traction on a long, cold, slippery stretch or just trust to fate that they will make it through? Anyone??

Jopa

Jopa, isn't it funny how sometimes these threads take on their own life and head off on some non intended tangent never to return any where near the initial question someone wanted to know? I'm often entertained by this phenomenon, but then I'm easily entertained.

As to your original inquiry, I never chain unless mandated by law, and even then I'm more likely to just park it and wait it out. You have to go so slow it feels like you are making less than minimum wage - at that rate I'd rather just sit and enjoy watching it snow.

Thanks, OldSchool, I needed that . . .

Jopa

Hi,

Couldn't resist this one. Was thinking of asking if the space between the seats and the bed is enough for a total gym. This led me to browse sites re exercises a trucker can do while on the road. I came upon the website www.thehealthytrucker.net. It may be of help, I don't know.

Back to the issue of chains. How much exercise can you really get from chaining up? How many times does one have to chain up? What if you work for a company that has these automatic chains installed on their trucks, will you say no, I want to chain up manually? I think having automatic chains (just like any other convenience) will save you time to do other stuff....like actual exercise. Just my thought. But to each his/her own.

Be safe out there.

Back to the issue of chains. How much exercise can you really get from chaining up? How many times does one have to chain up? What if you work for a company that has these automatic chains installed on their trucks, will you say no, I want to chain up manually? I think having automatic chains (just like any other convenience) will save you time to do other stuff....like actual exercise. Just my thought. But to each his/her own.

Serah, If you want to consider struggling with heavy chains in the cold & dirty slop at the transition point between rain & snow (the sand cast down for traction mixes with the snow to make slop) as exercise then I guess my idea of exercise and yours (as well as Daniel's) are quite a bit different. I will grant that there is a lot of huffing & puffing so I guess it qualifies as "aerobic" in nature. But, if you look at my post above, the technical deficiencies of the "new" chain machine will pretty much rule it out where the chain requirements are enforced (ie: California). All of the ambulances and fire engines here locally (Truckee/Lake Tahoe area) have had these for years but they stay locally and are not OTR type vehicles in that sense.

Jopa

To answer your earlier question Jopa I never put on a set of chains in 15 years of driving but I didn't go to the Northwest regularly. Maybe only a few times a year. But I'm from outside of Buffalo, NY and I grew up driving in heavy snow. I could drive through just about anything. But I agree with Old School...if it was so bad out that I needed chains I parked it. It's not worth it. The only way I would have done it is if I had regularly gone to the Northwest and once in a while came upon a mountain where it was bad on top but clear on both sides. I might have thrown them on once in a great while to get past that one area and be done with it. But never would I drive any sort of distance with chains on. You're wasting your time if you had to get across Wyoming on I-80 going 20 mph or whatever. It's not worth the risk.