My grandpa was a truck driver. He told me he hated bobtailing (driving with no trailer) because he didn’t get paid for it.
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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When a semi drives without a trailer, it’s called “bobtailing”, and can be dangerous. Semis are designed for the weight of a trailer, and not having that weight there throws the balance off.
Just have your mother sit in the back.
Yes but like any vehicle, if you know your machine and drive within its limits, it's fine. The only exception I can think of is when you're on the freeway and you suddenly encounter a patch of extremely rough road that you're going too fast for.
Very true. That’s why I was careful to say CAN be dangerous, not IS dangerous. Skilled truckers are some of the most capable and safe drivers on the road.
Skilled truckers
I have met truck drivers that can (and have demonstrated) back their trailer up to a cargo dock blindfolded.
I've met some that can navigate turning radii (radiuses? Radiens?) smaller than my old Nissan.
And then I've also met some that couldn't figure out their 13ft tall trailer can't fit under a 12ft 8 bridge...
For the most part though, in my experience truck drivers are better drivers than 97% of regular drivers.
Other than size It’s no different than an empty pick-up in rear-wheel drive.
Actually it could be safer, depending on conditions, if you’re equipped with locking differentials.
Although some pick-ups have that too, so… depends 🤷♂️
A bit true of larger trucks too. Long ago when we had an RV trailer and a dually truck, it rode and drove the best when it had a full load behind it.
Not necessarily unsafe, but similar for vans too. With nothing in my RWD vans cargo bay it’s quite easy to break traction. Especially on cold tyres.
I came here to say this. I'm not a driver, but I intake semi accident reports. They seem more likely to have accidents when they are bob tailing.
Holy shit. Talk out of your ass more. I've been a trucker for almost twenty years and this is close to the dumbest uninformed speculation presented as fact that I've ever witnessed.
Edit: Y'all really not showing anything credible. Safety departments exist to justify their own paycheck, so of course they churn out a constant slew of 'training materials' that amount to saying water is dangerous because you can drown by inhaling too much of it, so be extra careful when you have a little sip.
Technically, yes. That is correct. And the world is large enough that someone, somewhere, has certainly choked to death by accidentally inhaling an entire glass of water.
That doesn't make the statement "bobtailing can be dangerous" any less of a ridiculous overstatement.
Loaded, empty, bobtail, hell even just a different load distribution with weight shifted further forward or rearward, every possible way you can configure a truck has it's own challenges. Picking one and saying "ooh, gosh, that can be dangerous is not wrong, its just misleading, meaningless drivel.
I was told this by someone who worked for a trucking company.
You might also want to contact these companies and tell them they’re spreading misinformation:
https://www.freightcourse.com/bobtailing/
https://truckcrashlaw.com/blog/why-is-bobtailing-dangerous/
https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-a-bobtail-truck
…and MANY others.
They should include this guide with pick-up trucks and cargo vans because those (in rear-wheel drive) are essentially the same thing
Take it from a Canadian trucker, bobtailing in a blizzard is NOT a good time.
I'm guessing that twenty years ago you didn't have to go through the all the training that they make us go through today which explicitly talks about things like this? It's not uninformed, it's making a huge deal out of a small thing to make the average idiot driver 0.2% safer, which I guess makes a difference in the math of our modern megacarriers.
I didn't stop driving. The training never ends. And yes, my issue is with the idiotic overstatement to try to drive interest for a meaningless comment.
I was always told that there was a special braking mode that reduced the amount of breaks when they didn't have a trailer. No idea how true this is our whether it makes a difference, or if this is a European thing only.
As a former truck driver: can confirm. It was mostly freeing because I could actually go to Walmart or do laundry in the city without worrying about where and how to park.
Also, without a trailer it accelerates a lot faster. Like, genuinely spending more time shifting than accelerating. Feels weird.
Do you still start in 1st? Do you skip gears?
The truck I was driving had a DT12 (12-speed) and it would shift 1-2-4-6-8-10-12 if I remember correctly. Even with only 7 gears to go through, it still took forever. Maybe it wasn't actually more time shifting than accelerating, but it sure felt like it lol.
I don’t drive any more, but I’d start 18-speeds in 3rd and hit every 2nd gear on the way up
My only experience with driving trucks is in the Truck Sim games, but I agree.
Semi trucks haul ass when you have 600 bhp, a shitload of torque, and nothing in the back. Just don't take a corner too fast or you will regret it.
It is pretty fun to drive around without a trailer in ETS2
This is why I refuse to wear bras.
I guess you could skip every other gear or something?
Take off your trailers and burn em
Or you can let bo burn em
Muscle memory.