Trailer Wag

My first dually has been on order for nineteen days. By the end of this story it was twenty, because Earl's hay run turned into an all-nighter. That is not how Earl pitched it.

Quick catch-up. Earl's truck now runs metal valve stems. Earl now runs new jeans. Every coffee in the cab has a lid on it. It's policy now. Earl wrote it on a napkin.

Something I didn't mention last time: Earl's a hotshot driver. Whatever needs to get somewhere fast, he hauls it. Different load, different road, every job.

"Last month it was a church bell," he said. "Week before that, a pallet of bowling balls. Once, a giant fiberglass chicken."

"Where do you even deliver a giant chicken?"

"To a man who really wanted a chicken." He sipped his coffee. "Never the same day twice. That's the whole point."

I'll be honest. I was hooked.

This week, the job was alfalfa, and a lot of it. The flatbed was only half the order headed for Double Barrel Feed, so we went back to the ranch and hooked up Earl's bumper-pull flatbed trailer for the rest.

Two horses wandered over to supervise. Their corral sits right up against the freeway, and I'd already caught one of them standing at the fence watching the cars go by like he was waiting on a ride. When he walked straight up to me, that settled it. I named him Freeway.

"Don't name the livestock," Earl said. "It's not yours."

"Freeway doesn't know that."

Then I loaded the trailer. I stacked from the back first, because that's where I was standing. Earl watched, sipping his lidded coffee, and said nothing. That should have scared me.

Out on the highway, the trailer started to wag. Side to side, like a dog that heard the word "walk." My right foot went looking for the brake.

"Foot off the gas," said Sergeant Bomb Squad. "Hands still. Don't touch the truck brakes."

He reached over to the trailer brake controller and gently squeezed on the trailer brakes by hand. The trailer pulled back in line behind us like it had been caught chewing a shoe. We slowed down, pulled off and parked. My heart was going like a paint shaker. Earl hadn't even set his coffee down.

I've known Earl a while now, and I've never once seen him scared of anything. I'm not sure they installed that part.

"That," Earl said, "was tongue weight."

Later he told me he knew how this was gonna end, but he let me continue anyway, stacking an uneven load.

"Here's what I know about people," he said. "You can't tell 'em. You gotta show 'em. Tell a man about tongue weight and he nods. Let his trailer try to pass him on the highway and he'll remember it till he dies."

Earl doesn't do lectures. Earl does field trips.

Here's the lesson, new folks. Tongue weight is how hard the trailer presses down on your hitch. Too little and the trailer gets loose and sways. Too much and it lifts weight off your front tires, so steering and braking get worse. For a regular bumper-pull trailer, the number you'll see from truck makers and trailer safety folks is about 10 to 15 percent of the loaded trailer's weight. Your trailer's own manual has the final say.

How you get there: put about 60 percent of the load in the front half of the trailer, ahead of the axle. Keep it balanced side to side. Keep heavy stuff low. Then strap everything down so it can't shift, because a load that slides backward undoes all your good loading.

So I restacked. In the sun. Bale by bale.

"How do you check it for real?" I asked.

"Scale."

"I have a bathroom scale."

He gave me a look. But it's legit. Hitch and trailer makers publish a trick using a bathroom scale and a 2x4 lever, or you can use a real tongue-weight scale. Earl said I'm not allowed to borrow his wife's scale either way.

Then he crouched at the outside rear tire and tapped the sidewall. Same Load Range E tires from the stem story, if you're keeping score. Quick refresher for new folks: load range is the letter on the sidewall that tells you how tough the tire is built and how much air pressure it's built to take. E is the heavy-duty one you'll see on a lot of duallies, built for up to 80 psi (pounds per square inch).

"Light truck tires list two load ratings," he said. "One for single. One for dual. The dual one's lower."

"So they're weaker in pairs?"

"Like us."

That's on purpose. When a light truck tire runs as half of a pair, it's rated to carry less than when it runs alone. And the max load on the sidewall is at the tire's max pressure, so run the pressure on your door-jamb sticker.

Speaking of the door jamb. Earl opened his and tapped two labels. The tire and loading label has your payload, and tongue weight counts against payload. The certification label has two numbers with ugly names. GVWR is Gross Vehicle Weight Rating: the most your truck can weigh fully loaded, with fuel, people, cargo and tongue weight all counted. GAWR is Gross Axle Weight Rating: the most each axle, front and rear, can carry on its own. Tongue weight, cargo and people can't push you past any of them. The lowest rating in the chain wins. Every time.

The trailer has its own label too. Trailer tires usually say ST on the sidewall. That stands for Special Trailer, and it means they're made for trailers only, never for your truck. Their pressure comes off the trailer's own placard.

"Everything has a sticker," I said.

"I have a sticker," Earl said. He wouldn't explain.

By dusk we stopped at a gas station, and Earl made me do a light check before we went on. That's a walk-around with a helper. One person in the cab runs the running lights, left, right, brakes and hazards. The other stands behind the trailer and watches.

Earl stood back there doing hand signals like an air traffic controller who's had a long day. Left blinker: nothing.

"Ground," he said, before even looking.

He was right. The usual suspect is a bad ground. The white ground wire was bolted to a crusty, rusty spot on the frame. We cleaned it down to bare metal, tightened it back up, and the blinker came back to life. Earl did a tiny fist pump he will deny.

A gas station cat supervised the whole repair from the ice machine. I gave it a chin scratch. Earl said it probably had fleas. The cat climbed into his lap anyway. I have a photo.

Back on the road, Earl started scanning the tree line. "Dusk," he said. "Deer o'clock."

Then I saw them. Three deer, standing in the grass on the shoulder, staring at us like we owed them money.

Stay, I told them in my head. Stay. Stay. Stay. You're doing great. Nobody move.

I am an animal lover. Hitting a deer would wreck me for a year. Earl knows this, which is why he picked that moment to explain the rule.

"Something runs out, you do not swerve. Not an inch. You brake firm and steady, straight, in your lane. No yanking the wheel, no panic stomp. With a loaded trailer back there, a swerve or a sudden stop is how you jackknife."

"What if it's a really cute deer?"

"Straight. Line."

Here's the real guidance, new folks. Swerving is how people end up in the ditch, a tree or oncoming traffic, so stay in your lane and brake firmly. Towing, keep your braking and steering smooth, because sudden moves are what start sway and jackknifes. Slow down where deer hang out, especially at dawn and dusk. And where there's one deer, there are usually more.

Right on cue, a fourth one bolted across the road way up ahead. I came off the gas and squeezed the brakes steady, trailer straight behind us, and it cleared the far shoulder with room to spare.

The three on the shoulder never moved. Good deer, I told them. Best deer.

Earl hadn't flinched. Not once. He just took a sip of his coffee. Lid on.

"Your luck won't hold forever, you know," he said.

"Take that back."

He didn't.

Around 10, I asked if we could hit a drive-thru. Earl looked at the truck, the trailer, then the drive-thru.

"We'd be the drive-thru."

Then came the long, dark stretch.

Past midnight, I yawned so many times Earl started counting. I missed our exit. Then my tires hit the rumble strip, and that noise woke me up faster than any coffee ever has. It also scared me worse than the wobble did.

"Next rest stop," Earl said. No jokes. "Now."

This is the one we take dead serious, new folks. Frequent yawning, heavy eyelids, missing your exit, drifting out of your lane or hitting a rumble strip are all warning signs. Drowsy-driving crashes happen most between midnight and 6 a.m., and in the late afternoon. Turning up the radio or opening a window doesn't fix it. You can even nod off for a few seconds without knowing it.

What works: pull over somewhere safe and well lit. Drink a coffee, then take a short nap, about 20 minutes. Caffeine takes about half an hour to kick in, so you wake up just as it does. That's a temporary fix, not a substitute for sleep. Better yet, hand the wheel to someone who's rested.

Earl had napped in the passenger seat for two hours after the drive-thru, so he was the rested one. After my coffee nap, he drove the last leg.

Somewhere past five, the sky behind us went from black to navy to a thin orange line, like somebody struck a match along the horizon. Then the sun cleared the hills and lit the whole rig up at once. Chrome on the mirrors. Gold on the alfalfa. The trailer's shadow stretched out long across the lane, flames of light running down the fenders like a hot-rod paint job somebody had airbrushed just for us.

I sat there in the passenger seat grinning like an idiot. Twenty days on order, zero days owning a dually, and I'd just helped haul a full load of alfalfa through a wobble, a dead blinker, a deer crossing and the longest night of my life. Nobody got hurt. Not one bale fell off. Not one deer.

"We did it," I said.

"I'm driving," Earl said. "You did the snoring part."

"You snore like a jake brake." (That's an engine brake on a big rig. It's loud.)

"I've been told."

But he turned the radio down so we could just watch it come up. Which, for Earl, is basically a hug.

"This is why I do it," he said, mostly to the windshield. "New road, new sky, every load. You don't get this behind a desk."

"What's next week?"

"No idea." He grinned. "That's the best part."

I made a mental note: when my truck shows up, I'm asking about the chicken guy.

We rolled into Double Barrel Feed a few minutes later, past two more deer on the roadside. Stay, I told them. They stayed. I'm getting good at this.

A shop dog met us at the gate. "Stay," I said, out loud this time. He sat right down. First one all night who actually listened. Then he leaned on my legs like we'd been friends for years. The horses out back went straight for the alfalfa. I didn't name any of them. Out loud.

Earl scratched the dog behind the ears when he thought I wasn't looking.

"Not a word," said Sergeant Bomb Squad.