Liftable axles

[Asher_Newman]

Hello fellow truckers

So today I was playing American Truck Simulator. I chose to haul Solvents in long fuel tank trailer. When I got my trailer i noticed it had its frontmost axles lifted. This is the first time I encountered such thing on trailer. So what I wanted to ask is, what are these liftable axles on trailer for? When should you use the extra axles and when not to?

Cheers

[zyprexia]

Hi Asher,

Normally when the tanker is complete full, you use all trailer axles to spread the total train weight over more axles (equals less weight per axle). Tankers in general have multiple offload locations like gasstations.
At some point the extra axles is causing extra wear during corners (it's harder to turn with three axles close to each other, than with a single axle) and more rubber means more resistance which requires more fuel and heavier use on the engine (and transmission/converter(s)). So at some point it's economically wise to raise an axle. When the tanker is (almost) empty you can raise another axle on the trailer. The liftable truck axle is normally lifted once the trailer weight is below 12-15 tons.

But that is reallife usage of liftable axles. In ETS2/ATS those trailer axles are more a gimmick as you don't drive around with an empty tanker, flatbed or container trailer. Dropping extra trailer axles does increase fuel usage and the truck 'service' costs are increasing in a slightly faster rate. I do hope that in future we can reuse a trailer, so that you can drive with an empty contrailer trailer to a train yard to pickup one or two containers. Or that you need to visit multiple gasstation to refuel them.

In Europe signs like the one below are used to restrict weight per axle. Often you see these signs near older bridges..


Disclaimer: I have only knowledge about European (so called Code 95) rules. I apply the same constructs when I play ATS2. Most Code 95 rules are common sense and were best practices with most trucking companies before Code 95 certification was required by EU regulation.

Hope this helps,
Dave

[Peterson]

Yeah, it's also legal stuff, like you can't just by law carry 25t cargo on a single axle, not only your axles would break like dry spaghetti, but also imagine the slaughter on zie Autobahn when one of trailer tires bursts... and they say you can't get killed by a teddy bear. You can't, but when there's 28 EURO palettes of teddy bears flying around...

Anyways, I got slightly carried away. Main thing was said above me, you're putting less pressure and less stress on all axles, but beware of corners, unless you have some kind of a weird fetish on squeaking tires.