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A rigger in Council Bluffs told me to stop greasing my fifth wheel plate and I think he's wrong
I was hooked up to a 320 excavator outside a job site near Council Bluffs and a rigger with 30 years on me said I was wasting time greasing the fifth wheel plate every hookup. He said dry plates pull better and grease just collects grit that grinds the metal down over time. I smiled and kept my grease gun out because I've seen what a dry plate does on a 500 mile run through Iowa winter salt. We greased ours twice a day on a DOT inspection run and never had a single issue, and I know two guys who tore up their plates running dry because they listened to that advice. So am I the only one still greasing, or has anyone actually run dry long term and come out fine?
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the_diana20d ago
Wait, dry plates pull BETTER? That makes zero sense to me. Metal on metal with no lube is how you weld two things together, not how you pull a load down I-80. And the part about grease collecting grit, what does he think is happening without grease, the grit just floats away? I have seen fifth wheel plates with grooves worn into them like somebody took a grinder to the steel, and every single one belonged to a guy who bought into that dry plate nonsense. Thirty years on the job and that is the advice he hands out, unreal.
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