General purpose truck customization

[tigolebitties]

Here in Texas the trucks I see using headache racks on the truck are flatbedders, loggers, and general vocational rigs. It's where they store chains/straps and tools. I rarely see trailers with a built in rack. Never see a dry van/reefer hauler with a headache rack.

[gt379]

The headache rack is actually your life saver!

In an event that you have to suddenly abruptly stop because of X event or that your load securement device(s) fail during cruising speed and / or hard braking, your steel beams or coil or whatever you carry could shift forward and come crush you between your steering wheel (dash) and your seat (load going through the whole cab coming crushing you).

At this time, I do not find any regulation concerning the use of such walls (headache racks) but I can assure you that trucking companies doing flatbed use headache racks on the back of their cab / sleeper.

Some flatbeds even have the wall at the front of the trailer built in. On top of protecting drivers, they are more than just a wall, some are customized to store straps, hooks, chains, binders, you name it...

[supersobes]

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration used require flatbedders to have either a front wall on their trailer or a headache rack on their tractor, but that regulation was repealed years ago. However, some states have reimplemented that rule by writing new legislation at the state level, meaning that flatbed trucks in certain states may still be required to have something between the load and the back of the cab.

[gt379]

thank you to add-on

[Samus L. Jackson]

All righty, so I guess to simplify this for a newbie like me...if your trucking company primarily deals with dry vans or other self contained trailers (i.e. you're not strapping things down to a flatbed or otherwise have material that could come loose from the trailer and slam into the back of the truck), then the truck itself most likely will not have a headache rack/wall. But if your company does a lot of flatbed trailing, or the type of trailer you're strapping stuff onto, the truck probably WOULD have a headache rack.

And the advantage of having a headache rack on the truck as opposed to a wall built onto the trailer is that it allows you to move the cargo more forward on the trailer (so it could overhang the front of the trailer in the direction of the truck). This could be beneficial from a load balancing standpoint. Or it may also just allow for more room to load stuff on the trailer?

Is my assessment fairly close?

[gt379]

Yes,

but I don't think that any load should overhang to the front of the trailer... I know loads can overhang at the back of a trailer (with flag and lightning rules) but I never heard of a load overhanging at front... while I think about it, it would not make sense because at the front it is the space required to make turns and the load could potentially hit the back of the cab while making turns or reversing plus it could come into contact with air lines / electrical cord and damage all that... I would even say (without knowing for sure but logical deduction apply here) that it is illegal to have a front overhang (trailer front)... we need to check that now

[Some newbie driver]

Even if it could make sense, I guess that hauling loads that way would make every police patrol that see you to make you stop thinking your load is loose. So, probably, it doesn't worth at all.

[Deranged_Maester]

It's actually very common. Literally, the very first image with google image search is a trailer with overlength rebar.
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The only time you're likely to find a headache rack frame mounted on a truck that is pulling a boxvan is a one-off load. It would reduce the amount of weight the trailer could carry with no benefit at all. Boxvans tend to slide their fifth-wheels a lot more often than flatbeds and so that is another reason (amongst many) for not having a headache rack on a truck pulling a boxvan.

[Samus L. Jackson]

So, engine question. In this game, is there any reason to not go for the highest horsepower engine on every truck? I assume this is what most people do once their profile is at a high enough level to have all the engine options unlocked?

Or do some folks go for a less powerful engine in order to....role play? Give more of a challenge?

[Some newbie driver]

The reasons to not use unnecessarily big engines IRL are cost of the engine, cost of maintenance and cost of fuel. In some cases also the extra weight in case your usual loads are on the edge of the legal limits. But basically it's a question of costs. And, as you know, game economy is ultra-easy so that doesn't concern most players unless you start to tinker the game. So yes, the reason in the game to not go to big engines is to forcefully want to depict what would happen IRL, so role-playing mostly.-