I thought I’d relay a little story my brother told me a couple of weeks ago.
He drives for Maritime out of Felixstowe on containers and he was telling me they’ve had a few new sliding skelly’s come home recently and they are fitted with reversing sensors.Now these sensors apply the brakes when the trailer is near something solid.
Another driver had one of these new trailers and was delivering somewhere,he’d opened the doors of the container and was reversing on to a loading bay,only as he got near the bay the sensors applied the brakes and half the load shot out the back!
Now,it was funny at the time,but if someone had been standing near the back of the trailer they’d have been flattened (cases of tinned salmon) and I can’t help thinking some of these so called safety devices are downright dangerous!!
On a more serious note,my brother is getting a new FH12 460 XL with I-shift and I’ve told him I’m not speaking to him anymore and I’ll ignore him on the road!
I’ll wait for a comment from Mr.Sheer on that one…
kw, we have just changed our fleet of trailers and they have all got the sensors on them. they are a pain, it picks things up even at the side of you.to combat it tell your brother if he knows the area is clear behind him tell him to pull the secondry suzzie out this will over ride it.i ain’ t had the misfortune of things falling inside or out onto the ground but it is going to happen one day. the worst time it can happen is if your reversing into a customer from the main road and your brakes lock on and they start hurling abuse at you thinking you have slambed your brakes on until you get out and explain to them why this has happened.they tend to be more helpful by waiting til your in the premises.
that sounds crazy.
i have a camera and distance sensors. but i would not think that a sensor that applies the brakes would be good for a truck, especially when using loading docks.
does this only work in reverse.
what if your in traffic and some one drives on your bumper. does the truck slam on. or if your sitting at lights and go to pull off it wont let you because the car behinds to close.
crazy idea.
in fact its that crazy i think it does ,nt exist.
or is it that crazy is does exist.
Sounds like something that looked great on paper to the office bods who have never used a truck, but in the real world we have to get close to things to manourve and getting out and removing a susie is not a pratical answer, it’s not good for H&S, I believe that is also the Susie the works the reverse light and any trailer reverse alarms.
Hope used to make a moveable rear under-run bar that had a microswitch built into it. It worked by being armed from the reverse gear sensor on the gearbox. If the under-run bar was moved whilst reverse was selected it would dump the brakes in. They worked very well but they were quite expensive.
As a side issue we used to have fun and games in the yard when guys were maneouvreing round. What we used to do was hide behind the wagon and when it started to move backwards you just kicked the under-run bar. That stopped the movement. You waited until the reversing lights went out and the brakes released, wait for the reversing lights to come back on and just do the same again… and again… until either you got bored or someone came after you with a winding handle
believe that is also the Susie the works the reverse light and any trailer reverse alarms
no it’s your fog light, does not cut out any bleeper nor reversing lights.yes it is a pain if your reversing and have to remove the susie all the time, but if you want in without any stop start then it must be done.there’s no other way to over ride it.
we talk about susie’s that get removed and cut’s out bleepers etc.what about the m a n,when you turn the side lights on that cuts out the reversing bleeper. talk about h&s.and these are the big truck companies that are producing these devices.
A lot of reversing beepers are wired up that way Kitkat. The idea is that, after 2300ish till 6ish (probably got the times wrong), you should not sound your horn, except in an emergency to warn someone that you are there. I assume that, as some reversing beepers can be very piercing and irritating, they also should not be sounded and because it is normally dark between those times so your lights will be on. Switching on your lights will switch off the beeper.
