To Jackknife or Not to Jackknife—That is the Question?

This blog (soon to be a position paper) was inspired by an article in Transport Topics the weekly newspaper of the trucking industry. If you Google “Proper Inflation, Wheel Balancing Help Extend Tire Life, Experts Say” it will take you to the story. You might have to register as a guest for full access, but it is worth the trouble. If that doesn’t work I will e-mail you a copy.

The story was an inspiration to me because it was the first time the importance of both proper air pressure management and wheel end balance on commercial vehicles were not only discussed hand-in-hand, but was also in the headline.

As I was reading the article I had the news on the TV playing in the background. The lead story was about a jackknifed tractor trailer that had shut down the interstate for hours in both directions. Between the article and my own knowledge of tires and wheel ends it hit me how to eliminate 80% of these ridiculous traffic tie ups. This just in from the Urban Mobility Scorecard:

Nationwide, the report says congestion kept travelers stuck in their cars for nearly 7 billion extra hours last year, or 42 hours per rush-hour commuter. It pegs the total nationwide price tag at $160 billion, or $960 per commuter. Drivers wasted more than 3 billion gallons of fuel, the report says. 

Using Dr. Deming’s management philosophy, by looking at the entire trucking industry as a system, we can orchestrate all the parts to work together to save tremendous amounts of time, money and lives for all of us.

My goal and the purpose of this article is to solve a major problem in America while at the same time demonstrating how Dr. Deming’s philosophy of looking at how things get, or don’t, get done. Dr. Deming points out that 85% of the problems with quality are because of the system and management’s lack of understanding of the system they are suppose to be managing; the lack of profound knowledge about the system is what Dr. Deming would call the problem. But in the trucking industry, the problems are almost always blamed on the workers, not the system and not the management.

In the analysis of the problem of jackknifed tractor trailers my associates and I have broken the problem down into these key areas. They are in order of the impact that systems engineering will have on that area:

Equipment Management

• Trailer Tire Air Pressure Management
• Wheel End Balance
• Brake Performance

Drivers

• Training
• Management Dispatch
• More Training

Environmental Issues

• Roads
• Weather
• Traffic
• Other Vehicles

Going back to the article that inspired this project and my own knowledge, here are a few givens:

• Trailer tires are usually the most neglected tires on a tractor trailer.
• If the air pressure was right when the trailer was loaded, it is now wrong when it is empty.
• Most maintenance personnel, for historical reasons, don’t believe in the concept of balancing commercial vehicle wheel ends, let alone trailer tires.
• Most jackknifing incidences involve an empty or nearly empty trailer.

Looking at this from a systems standpoint, let’s compare what happens today vs. what we should be doing to eliminate 70% to 80% of the jackknifed tractor trailers.

Today a driver is dispatched to pick up a trailer and move it somewhere else, or the driver visited a factory or warehouse and waited while his trailer was loaded or unloaded. The point is the trailer tires (and tractor drive tires) that were at the correct pressure when loaded are now wrong when the trailer is unloaded.

So how wrong is wrong, and how is this cause of 70% to 80% (depending on who you ask) of the jackknifed tractor trailers?

To explain the problem let’s just do what Einstein called a thought experiment. Image a beach ball the size of a commercial truck tire. Blow it up as hard as you can and bounce it. Now sit on the beach ball simulating a 40,000 pound load. You can bounce up and down on it and if you don’t fall off the beach ball’s footprint stays on the floor; it never bounces off the floor no matter how hard you bounce. As a side note, that footprint is a key component to a truck’s braking system. The brakes only work if the tire has a decent footprint in contact with the road.

The above is an example from the logging industry

For the next phase of this thought experiment pretend to take some duct tape and tape your smart phone to the beach ball anywhere on it. Now in the unloaded condition use your hand to slap the ball to make it bounce like you have just hit a bump, pothole or my favorite, a bridge expansion joint (a subject of a future paper). 

With enough imagination you now have your trailer tire bouncing. The reason I added the smart phone is that even on a perfect brand new road, your beach ball tire would be bouncing with a little footprint because of the out-of-balance condition created by the weight of the smart phone. 

So, back to the jackknifing problem and its prevention. When the tractor pulling the trailer brakes and the trailer doesn’t brake due to the lack of a good footprint on the ground, the trailer pushes the tractor that is stopping. Under certain conditions this can force the tractor from a straight line stop to a jackknifed out-of-control position.

The next step is to remove the smart phone and let enough air out of our imaginary beach ball so when you drop it it doesn’t bounce. It just hits the floor and sticks like glue. Those trailer tires at the right pressure is what will stop 80% of the jackknifed tractor trailers that causes many of us every day to sit in traffic wondering why the hell traffic isn’t moving.

To solve this problem, let’s look at where the trucking industry is and my prediction of the future. I can tell you it will be a roundabout path to the future.

So the current trucking industry management philosophy is to say this is the way it is and sorry for the inconvenience America, but it is just too much trouble to change. Change is hard—right! The current system is to blame the driver, blame the lack of driver training and blame the weather.

The future should be that every commercial trailer should have an automatic inflation system on board that adjusts the pressure of the tires based on the load. There are many trailers today with automatic tire inflation systems, but they are set to maximum pressure. They do not lower the pressure when the trailer is empty or partially loaded. They should, but they don’t. That should be fixed. 

The tire industry has provided the trucking industry with charts that show how much pressure should be in the each type of tire they manufacture. As the load changes, so should the tire pressure.

The argument against automation of trailer air systems is the cost, the training of drivers and mechanics and the additional maintenance required. Even fixing the automatic inflation system that already exists to recognize an empty trailer from a full trailer will be fought as being too hard and expensive for the trucking industry. Yet these jackknifed trucks cost us a fortune in time, money and lives.

The way this will play out is regulations will force automation of trailer air pressure systems. The government regulators have rules and laws that can put a tractor trailer out of service for improper tire air pressure. These same enforcement officers have access to the paper work that tells them what is being transported and how much it weights. They currently look only for under inflation, because that can lead to tire blowouts. What if they also look for over inflation on trailer tires specifically because of the jackknifing problem? 

If the aforementioned happened then every tire care center and truck stop that has tire service would be installing a proper tire inflation inspection lane that would install what one tire industry expert calls a “four-line spider” that would adjust the air pressure on the trailer to be correct to help reduce tractor trailer jackknifing. The four-line spider airs up four tires at once putting all of them at exactly the correct pressure. Based on the trailer load the tire technician would set the pressure to match the load. With a four-line spider on each side of the trailer a tire technician can adjust the pressure to a safe setting. 

When the expense of this manual system gets to a certain point, the automatic systems will look inexpensive in comparison.

Dr. Deming taught the concept that management is prediction. Here is my prediction on how the future will play out. This is roughly the order I predict things will happen.

A public awareness program is started to educate truck drivers and all tire care centers that proper inflation is based on the load on the tire, not the maximum inflation pressure the tire can handle.

The Love’s chain of tire care centers set up “QUICK ADJUST” lanes at all their tire centers using the latest technology to adjust tire pressure. Empty trailers are adjusted as a public service for a voluntarily donation by the driver or company to the Children’s Miracle Network.

Here is an update on the above prediction, Loves is running a full back page ad in Transport Topics August 31, 2015 for a new service called TirePass, from their website:

TirePass: Fuel and tire-inflation service

Welcome to TirePass from Love's Travel Stops. Pull into the fuel and tire-inflation service lane and fuel up while we measure, evaluate and correct your tires. A trained Love's technician will check your tire pressure, automatically inflate low tires, measure tread depth and visually check tire and wheel assemblies.

Here is a link to their video.

The only flaw in the plot is that the video says the tech inflates to the driver's request. How many drivers are going to know how to use, and have, the tire manufacturers inflation chart on hand? How accurate will be the load on the axle information be. Don't get me wrong, this is great progress!

Other tire care centers follow Love’s lead.

Government safety officials start giving out warning tickets to drivers with empty trailers and high air pressure in the trailer tires.

All jackknife incidences are studied by a hand picked group of Industrial and Systems Engineers, most likely based at Auburn University.

Then one day the presidents of all the trucking organizations in the world get together and issue a statement that it is their belief the best way to manage the jackknife issues is to have on board systems.

Depending on how this article is received, we might continue into the driver and environmental issues in the future.

More About Bob Rutherford Management Consultant

Bob Rutherford is a management consultant in the area of quality, productivity, sales, marketing and social media. 

Among his current clients are Auburn University’s Office of Technology Transfer and theProgram for Advance Vehicle Evaluation (PAVE). 

He is also working to advance truck safety by helping the Australian/USA company AIR CTI to grow their system of central tire inflation worldwide. As a fan of all things trucking he is helping Truck It Records to “keep trucking music alive.” In addition, with his wife, he operates an Internet based mercantile site so that he always has first hand experience in the area of Internet commerce.

Links to Other Quality Management Articles by Bob Rutherford

 Why Should You Hire an Independent Quality and Productivity Consultant?

You Need Quality Management to Actually Have Quality Management

This is an Example of Dr. Deming's Idea of Continuous Improvement

Breaking the Rules of Quality—a Department Does a “Big Reveal”

A Business Act of Piracy as defined by Bob Rutherford

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