I was under the impression (more from hearsay years ago) that if your vehicle is loaded then your lift axle should be down. If you are empty then it should be up. This raises the obvious issues that you could be wheel spinning in wet conditions when you only have a tonne on board so wouldn’t make sense to me. Also you have designated weights for your drive axle and if you have a full load on of mixed pallets you would be just guessing as to the weight on your axle, even if you added the weight then the counter balance of the goods at the back of the trailer would change that. So what is the definitive answer ? Up or down, loaded or empty.
I do recall getting one of the first Actros’s with an automatic lift axle, what a pain in the hoop… It was up and down depending on hills and depending on what I’d delivered, at the time i was doing multi drops (up to 20) and the load was constantly decreasing and not always from the back to the front either haha. I’ve never seen this setup since and that to me is good, it didn’t even have an overide button on it so you could lower it if it did start lifting and dropping willy nilly !!!
On agency i did a job for wincanton out of Hereford a few years ago the girl in the office said to me even if i had just one empty pallet on i must have the axle lowered
As long as no axle wieghts are over then you may run with the axle raised regardless of the weight of the load carried up to the permitted gross weight/taxed weight of the vehicle,mine’s always up when part/light loaded. Imho it should be illegal to run with the axle down when empty as it causes major traction/steering problems in less than perfect road/weather conditions. Axle raised = maximum traction & steerage on your vehicle & is just as important on large rigids as it is on artic’s.
We have all M.A.N fleet at our place and they lower automatically if the trailer is heavy, so if they don’t lower on their own I’ll leave the axle up, saves wear on the tyres and aids grip.
bald bloke:
We have all M.A.N fleet at our place and they lower automatically if the trailer is heavy, so if they don’t lower on their own I’ll leave the axle up, saves wear on the tyres and aids grip.
4whatitsworth:
On agency i did a job for wincanton out of Hereford a few years ago the girl in the office said to me even if i had just one empty pallet on i must have the axle lowered
Yes, it is funny how it’s always the office staff who know it all…
4whatitsworth:
On agency i did a job for wincanton out of Hereford a few years ago the girl in the office said to me even if i had just one empty pallet on i must have the axle lowered
FLIP:
As long as no axle wieghts are over then you may run with the axle raised regardless of the weight of the load carried up to the permitted gross weight/taxed weight of the vehicle,mine’s always up when part/light loaded. Imho it should be illegal to run with the axle down when empty as it causes major traction/steering problems in less than perfect road/weather conditions. Axle raised = maximum traction & steerage on your vehicle & is just as important on large rigids as it is on artic’s.
^^ this.
the axle symbol on my Volvo flashes if the axle is up and it needs to be down, usually up to around 10.5 tons and the axle stays up, if the symbo lstarts flashing, put it down.
As my old gaffer called them bloody expensive spare wheel carriers. Under 35 tonnes or so and the midlifts stayed up, trailer axle up as well under 25 ton or so
bald bloke:
We have all M.A.N fleet at our place and they lower automatically if the trailer is heavy, so if they don’t lower on their own I’ll leave the axle up, saves wear on the tyres and aids grip.
Ditto
It was the same with the dafs i drove.
regards dave.
Basically I work on the theory that the axle drops when it needs to, same as the one on my trailer.Which is usually when it hits around the 30t gross mark.
4whatitsworth:
On agency i did a job for wincanton out of Hereford a few years ago the girl in the office said to me even if i had just one empty pallet on i must have the axle lowered
Yes, it is funny how it’s always the office staff who know it all…
The world is full of experts, most of whom have never had any experience in the subject they profess to know all about.
It used to be thought it was the case under the old system of taxing artics when you did it 2+2, 2+3 or 3+3 for example However, it wasn’t even true then after a court case where the judge ruled an axle is an axle regardless of whether it was raised or lowered and there was nothing in the regulations that stated it had to be in contact with the road. So if it was taxed 3+3 it didn’t matter if two or three of the axles were raised provided the weight didn’t require them to be down.
Coffeeholic:
It used to be thought it was the case under the old system of taxing artics when you did it 2+2, 2+3 or 3+3 for example However, it wasn’t even true then after a court case where the judge ruled an axle is an axle regardless of whether it was raised or lowered and there was nothing in the regulations that stated it had to be in contact with the road. So if it was taxed 3+3 it didn’t matter if two or three of the axles were raised provided the weight didn’t require them to be down.
It is another thing to be wary of if you hear a DPCPC trainer speaking out loud.
This bit about if you have any load on all axles need to be down goes back to the reduced tax for 38 tonnes on 6 axles. If you were on the “cheap” £1,240 6 axle only tax then you had to have all axles down even with one letter on, but that is 20 years ago now.
These days as long as your axle weights are correct you are good to go. A few years ago I did the odd shift for Interbrew Samlesbury, when they had their own fleet, and a regular weekend job was to collect new empty bottles. These loads weighed in at 13.5 tonnes giving a gross of 29 tonnes, and the mid-lift on the MANs stayed up, if left on automatic. Now Samlesbury is one of the few sites I know of with a dynamic axle weigher, when it worked that is. If you ran over it with one of these loads and the axle up, the front axle of the unit weighed 8700kg, give or take, or 1200kg over weight. You could slide the 5th wheel back to the position it would be on a 4 x 2 tractor, but the powers that be wouldn’t have any of that, so it was manual override the axle down to keep legal.
Ahhh…
surely you didnt believe that! 