Wiggle wagons waggled when they should have wiggled.

[Clipper]

wcyb.com/news/local/tractor-trailer-crashes-along-i-81-in-washington-county

This is one very lucky truck driver to walk away from such a wreck without being pinned in the cab and seriously injured. Truck drivers call the tandem and triple trailer configurations "wiggle wagons" for a reason. Take my word for it. Unless you are going up a hill with a steady pull on those multiple trailers, you had better be sitting straight up and alert with both hands on the wheel, and when you change lanes it better be a gentle easing from one lane to another. If you whip out or whip back in and get that rear trailer swinging you are in deep doo doo. If that rear trailer is empty, they call it a "kite" because the wind from a passing truck will set it swinging, which in turn will cause the first trailer to sway, If the driver is not on top of the situation, it is not hard for those trailers to accentuate the sway with every swing, and put you and anyone around you in some serious danger. Someone's package is going to be late.

I wonder if a person goes on line and checks their tracking number if it will show the status and location as "in the ditch, Meadowview Virginia.

[clarencebunsen]

I always get nervous passing a triple. Are the safety risks worth the reduced shipping costs?

[Clipper]

Not always. The company I drove for out of Duluth forced a dozen or so of us with a 10 yrs safety record to pull triples in 1986. The union negotiated it against our wishes. They were treacherous to haul in the wind or on slippery roads. The agreement was that we would drop one trailer if the wind gusts were over 45 mph. We did our best to drop trailers in the most inconvenient places we could find so that they would have to dispatch a tractor from Duluth to go get it and deliver it to it's destination. They soon found that it was not worth it. They ended up spending more than the added revenue from the third trailer could generate. Not to mention the fact that our union contract provided us with a $15 dollar stipend for every trailer that we dropped and hooked. With three trailers some of us could make 90 dollars or more in a day with just the drop and hook pay. The union had also negotiated a pay increase for those of us that pulled them. The going rate at that time for a single trailer was 32 cents a mile. When we pulled the triples we were paid 47 cents a mile, further exacerbating the lack of revenue generated by the experiment. In less than 3 months before we were back pulling our single 48 foot trailers. The sold all their 26 and 26 foot trailers to Consolidated Freightways. When it was nasty weather in the Dakotas Wyoming and Montana, it was no picnic keeping those things between the guard rails.

They only pull tandems in Tennessee. No triples. It was a set of doubles that wrecked today.