We just got 4 inches of snow yesterday, while I was driving around in the snow when I would hit the brakes the rear drums would lock up no matter how little pressure i would put on it. Any advice

 

Don't hit the brakes. Progressive braking, increasing your distance and thinking ahead will help. Adding weight will help too. I have a ton in the bed for winter and it really has made a lot of difference for traction and braking although the rear wheels will still lock if I brake hard which I don't do as it wears the linings faster

 

Yeah, older trucks without abs will do that.

 

The rears can be adjusted without taking the wheel off.
At the bottom of backing plate on the outside, under the truck, there will be a rubber plug that's rectangular/oval in shape. Pull that off with a flathead screwdriver, inside you can feel with your flathead and feel the gears of the brake adjuster star wheel. I don't remember which way/direction is tighten or loosen...
But if you take the screwdriver, you can move the wheel gears up by moving the screwdriver down.
Or, you can move the wheel gears down by moving the screwdriver up.
You can adjust the rear brakes so that they won't lock up as quick.
And as mentoned, start hitting the stop pedal farther before your stops...this is just natural with drum brakes. Believe me, it's fun with the 4-way drums on the '65! All 4 lock up LOL
I have my 85 adjusted so that the first stop in the morning at the end of the road will lock up the rear brakes, after that they are good for the day. But you'll find it natural for the rears to lock up before the fronts on the first stop of the morning, WAY more noticable with wet roads or snow on the ground.

 

My 96 will do the same thing and it has ABS. I can't hardly drive it when it's raining you just look at the brake pedal and the rears will lock up. I've had several of these trucks do that. Usually adjusting the rear brake up will help.

 

Figures I would get stuck with a truck that was used to pull before I got it. It will stop a gooseneck trailer no problems w/o trailer brakes(My trailer's brakes weren't working when I got it XD)

 

I wouldn't worry about a truck's history too much. My first truck, the '65 F350, was a tow truck in it's life before I bought it. When we pulled the wrecker body off with our neighbors farm tractor, the suspension rose about 3"...Yep, all 12 springs on each side had been under that load for 40ish years.
Matter of fact, it's funny how stories can go...
My grandfather drove tractor-trailer local deliveries for 36 years and he remembers my truck back when it was a wrecker, it operated out of a gas station a couple towns over.
Something even funnier?
A neighbor a mile up the road from me runs a towing company, he owns 2 rollbacks and a show-truck wrecker (It's SWEET, he drives down to Florida each year for the tow-truck shows). We bought the truck and asked him to tow it home. He gets to my house and unloads it from the rollback. Turns the key and nothing happens. He says "Oh I remember this". He gets out of the truck, pops the hood, wiggles a wire on the firewall, shuts the hood, gets back in the truck and fires it up. He pulls it in the driveway and shuts it off. He explained that back when he was in high school, he learned how to drive a wrecker with this truck...which put him into the business he has now.

I wouldn't worry about the trucks history, as long as the frame isn't rusted out and the engine still runs....then I say RUN IT, RUN IT HARD!!
I truly swear that my truck runs better the more I beat it...so I keep beating it everyday!

 

Not neccessarily your problem but FYI organic rear brake shoes will swell in moist conditions, especially if it sits for a period of time. The material will absorb the humidity in the air and result in grabby brakes because the shoe to drum gap is closer. Any damp or rainy morning my truck's rear brakes are as you described until it "burns" of the moisture content usually after some driving and good stops.

 

Thanks for the help, the truck quit locking up when i got on the highway and drove it and then off and quit.

 

you also didn't have enough friction on the road to roll you through the friction you had on the shoe and drum. pretty common on snowy and icy roads.

 

yeah i would figure so. But its all good now. It does it in the early morning. Then stops after I drive it for a while.

 

It's definitely what 87crewdually described then. Totally "normal"