Pusher or Tag Axles

[Tiny]

Who likes what and why??

Trucks at work have steerable and non steerable pushers some are air bag up and some are spring up.The two trucks with steerable pushers do good in corners but you are stuck with a super single style tire.

Non steerable axles are tough in tight corners but you can move tires from the drives to the pusher.

The spring up axles (uses coil springs to lift axle) seem ok but if you have a cop around and have to make a turn and release the air the axle comes off the ground and the cop can write a ticket for a permit violation.

With the air up (uses an airbag to lift the axle) you can release the air and the axle stays on the ground.

A steerable axle while going forward you can leave down in a corner but it has to be raised in reverse as they will counter steer in reverse.

I just want to see what you like and why.

The brand we have more that anything else is Watson & Chalin, 20,000 lbs models

 

[Greg]

Have two quad axle dumps here with two non steer pushers on both. Run 11.00/22.5 low profile tires on them here, which is legal. Use the low pro's because it give better ground clearance when up. Lots of guys running steerable pushers here also, same set up for tires.

 

[Will Musser]

I have a spring up on my truck and love it. I leave it down when turning too. One thing though, in Oklahoma if your control switch is inside the cab, it's a lift axle. If its outside the cab, it's a pusher. Lift axles only get 8,000lbs while pushers get 20,000lbs. I got a ticket about 3 weeks ago for it up at Muskogee. What I did was put my controlls in the back left corner of the cab. After getting the ticket, I cut the line between the switch and the lift axle airbags and put a air switch in it. With the spring up axle, if the trooper asks where your switch is you can hop out and flip it for him and it will lift, then you still have the controls in the cab if you want to dump to turn.

 

[Tiny]

Well....I didn't tell that part.Regulator and switch are mounted outside and a dump switch that looks like an electrical toggle switch is on the dash.

This one is an air up, flip the switch out side and the axle go's up and down but you can dump inside to get it to turn.

 

[stumpjumper83]

on the volvo I used to drive it had a manual valve with a lever inside the cab that controlled the tag. If you turned the lever half way the axle looked down but wasn't carring weight so turning was easier...

 

[Autocar]

Ive had a number of them over the years but non of them were steerable. I once had a Mack that was a single drive axle and the tag was on the rear. It didn't lift up it was nothing but a pain, you could get hung up on a crop feild were the bean row was that summer. On my Autocar it is a tandem drive with a liftable axle ahead of the drive and have never had a problem . Well at least not yet