Heavy Duty Trucking, September 2019
I drove two trailers on three loops around a test course through the Canton Ohio area The first was an empty van trailer equipped with a steel spring suspension The second run was with an empty van equipped with an Ultraa K suspension with the ZMD technology The third run was the same trailer with about 10000 pounds of dunnage placed directly over the rear bogies I used the same air ride Volvo VNR for all three loops The empty steel spring trailer was predictably nasty The road leading from Hendricksons gate to the highway access was really nothing more than a loose grouping of pothole patches that shook one of my video cameras right off its dashboard mount Out on the freeway the concrete washboard continued beating on the truck each trip over a seam resulting in a slap in the back While passing over a series of bridge joints at a modest speed I could distinctly feel the three sets of axles passing over the joints starting with the steer thump then thump thump as the drives went over and after a pause thump thump as the trailer axles went over the seams There were three sets of railroad tracks on the route The first two werent too bad but the third was brutal with four sets of tracks each grade crossing badly deteriorated That one was enough to bounce the trailer axles right off the ground at just 25 mph Second loop huge change The second loop around the track with the empty ZMD trailer felt about 500 better I could still feel the potholes on the first part of TEST DRIVE HDT SEPTEMBER 2019 50 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM Hendrickson placed a 5 ton block of concrete over the trailer axles for the final leg of the test drive PHOTO JIM PARK
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