Replies

I don't know if this is in my top ten, but it sure burns me up. I have a boat. 23 feet long. On a trailer. I CANNOT GET ON THE FREEWAY!!!!! You come up a ramp. Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration takes a nap when you hook the trailer to the truck. No one will let merge in. They will even speed up to keep you from getting in front of them, even when there's two empty lanes to their left that they could use. So I'm trying to get on the freeway, truck is floored and has all the pick-up of a herd of turtles, and I'm running out of pavement. What do I do?? Trust me, you don't want the boat to hit you, it carries 120 gallons of very flammable gasoline. And if the trailer hits the shoulder, control will be lost.

I was talking about surface roads, but you bring up a point about drivers in the right lane whom I swear don't have the neck muscles to turn their heads. I'm in a simple Acura, but I can't tell you how many times I've entered the local interstate to see drivers in the right lane who act like they don't even know the on-ramp exists.

I think their attitude is that if they don't look at you, then you don't exist. That makes the merge my problem to deal with.

-PJ

"I don't know if this is in my top ten, but it sure burns me up. I have a boat. 23 feet long. On a trailer. I CANNOT GET ON THE FREEWAY!!!!! You come up a ramp. "

I'm a boater, too. This is a real problem...no question about it. I try really hard not to use on-ramps where there's lots of traffic. You can't always avoid it, but sometimes, I'll drive five miles on surface streets to use another ramp when towing my boat. That ramp is way longer, and will let me hit right lane speeds by the end of the ramp. It's also past the most crowded part of the highway, so it's usually easier.

The worst time I ever had was when I was driving across the country with a 24-foot moving truck right at its GVW limit. It was one of those big U-hauls. I bought the thing from U-haul. Talk about underpowered.

One thing I discovered was that big rigs are very nice about letting you merge if you're in a crappy truck like that. I remember one long, uphill ramp on I-35 in Iowa. There was no way on this planet that I was going to be doing more than 35 mph at the top of the ramp, even running that engine up to redline on each shift.

I started up the ramp with my foot through the floor. A guy driving a big semi saw me start up the ramp. He was about 1/4 mile back, and he slowed down so that he would be right behind me when I got to the top of the ramp. Made it easy for me.

I caught up with him later at a truck stop and thanked him for helping me out. He said, "Well, you guys in those little tiny trucks have a hard enough time. I thought I'd give you a hand."