Couldn’t you just put the truck in neutral and use the regular brakes?
In: 16
A “Jake brake” is just a slang term for an engine compression release (valve). You can use the regular brakes, of course, but when carrying a heavy load, the force applied to the brakes is also heavier, meaning they heat up faster. You can, quite literally, roast your breaks and catch your tires on fire by overusing your brakes while carrying a heavy load, mainly on a downhill descent.
The correct way to approach a long and steady decline, whether in a car or semi truck, is to force your vehicle into an intentionally low gear (for passenger vehicles, 2nd, or L if you don’t have specific options in your automatic) so that the engine and transmission are also sharing the work of keeping you in a controlled descent.
A jake brake (engine compression release valve) is found in very large engines. To put it simply, it lets air out of the engine at a key point in the cycle in order to drastically lower compression, which in turn drastically lowers the engine’s ability to perform work, at a rapid pace. Since it occurs during the *compression* phase, you’re hearing the sound of all the force in that massive engine pushing air out of a (relatively) small valve at full force, which is why it’s so incredibly loud, and banned within many city limits.
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