Colorado-Bound or The Day I Got My Truck Stuck

8:48 AM 3/24/2008 Target Distribution Center, Pueblo Colorado-- Bobtail Lot

Let me first begin by saying how incredible the terrain is out here. I've never seen anything quite like this before. I drove 548 miles yesterday, most of it was within the Texas state lines. It's just like the movies out here. The ground is dry, yellowing, and has small dead-looking shrubs scattered about. I suspect that these are what eventually become tumbleweeds, which I didn't see at all. I saw for the first time in my life (at least in person) a wind-farm and windmills.

It's bizarre to be driving in near untouched territory and then come around a curve and see patches of gigantic windmills all over the place.

For some reason, it gave me the creeps.

Somehow, just across the New Mexico state line, the land changed. It went from flat, yellow, and almost diseased-looking to mountainous, green, and fertile. I really don't understand how an invisible state line could yield such a change, but it did. And then it got cold. It went from maybe sixty-ish to the mid-to-low-forties.

And I was still driving with the windows down.

I passed through New Mexico into Colorado quickly (I only drove 50-80 miles within NM) and then into the mountains. I'm fairly sure what I was driving in was not the Rockies, but they were certainly huge to me.

I felt like something of a Spanish explorer, seeing these things for the first time. At one point on the mountain, I looked down through the snow-dusted trees and saw an AmTrak passenger train snaking it's way through the area and it really solidified the fact that this was all totally foreign, but very amazing to me.

I ended up spending the night at a rest stop in Colorado City, about 35 miles away from Pueblo, CO which is my final destination.

So here I sit watching my breath pass by, waiting for my trailer to be unloaded.

Once I'm finished here, I am taking a strategically-placed 34 hour break to reset my hours for the week. I feel clever because Lauren is driving down from Denver to pick me up so I can spend my break in a new city, visiting with a good friend. It was all very spur of the moment, and just happened to fall into place at the last second.

Now, a story from a few days ago.

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This past Thursday I was driving through Louisiana on my way to Laredo when it was time to pull off the interstate to my fuel-stop in Lafayette. As I exited and made the turn onto the road where the truck stop I was supposed to fuel up at, I noticed two cop cars fly past me with their lights flashing. I looked ahead to where they had to have been going and it turned out that the truck stop I was assigned to fuel up at, was surrounded by HazMat teams, police, firefighters, and ambulances. For some unknown reason the entire place had been evacuated, and I definitely wasn't getting in. So I drove past it and began to look for a place to turn around. I had driven maybe 10 miles and was beginning to get impatient when I stumbled upon what looked like a perfect candidate for a turnaround.

I'm going to try to explain this as best as I can... I apologize if it doesn't translate well.

It was a dirt parking lot on the corner of a four-way intersection and looked completely doable. So I passed the intersection on my right, made my first right hand turn into the lot, and made my way to the exit. The light had turned red, so traffic in the lane I was going to turn into was slowing and stopping and it looked like nobody was going to let me out. A guy in a white Camry stopped before the exit of the lot so I made my turn. The cars had stacked up a bit at the light, so I didn't have room to completely turn into the lane, and was jutting out into oncoming traffic. So I cut back in hard to let traffic through, consequently making my turn very narrow. I saw in my right rearview mirrow that the back trailer wheels were in danger of falling into a small ditch if I didn't take the turn as wide as possible. I knew there was about a 50% chance that they were going to go into the ditch if I pulled forward, but backing up wasn't an option because I had traffic stopped already behind me. So I pulled forward slowly and the trailer wheels fell straight into the ditch. What I did not expect to happen, was the weight of the trailer to torque the tractor to the point of lifting the wheels off of the ground. I gave it gas, trying to pull the trailer out not knowing that my wheels were just spinning in the air. Once I saw I wasn't moving, I got out to survey the damage.

You can imagine my surprise and embarassment when I saw the situation. I was completely blocking one lane of traffic, and partially blocking the other (it was a two lane road). More than any of that though, I had a sinking feeling when I realized that the trailer (which had 45,000 lbs of weight in the back) was leaning so badly that it was only a few degrees from flipping the over.

Seeing part of your truck completely off of the ground is not a good thing.

And blocking two lanes of traffic on a two lane road wasn't cool either.

A cop who had been watching the whole thing from a car-wash across the street started walking over to me and I met him halfway in the now-blocked street. He was pretty pissed at first and asked me what I intended to do to fix the situation and I told him that I wasn't exactly sure how this was going to get fixed, but to give me a few minutes.

I got back into the truck and sent a message to the company through the computer letting them know that I was stuck, and to send help. I got a response saying that they were sending a truck-tow-truck.

Before I got into the trucking industry I wasn't ever sure that something like that existed.

During my training, we broke down in St. Louis and had to enlist the help of one, so I knew what to expect this time. I was curious to see exactly how the tow truck driver was going to approach this one though.

About thirty minutes after I sent the call for help to the company, I saw my tow truck approaching. It pulled into the parking lot and stopped with a great hiss of air and dust. A huge beast of a man climbed out of the truck wearing sunglasses and a name-patch on his shirt that said simply, "Big John-- Supervisor"

I knew it was serious when I saw that they sent out the big guns, haha.

He reached into the side of the truck and pulled out a set of massive chains which he dragged towards me, one in each hand. As he approached me menacingly he asked without looking at me,

"How much is in the trailer?"

"Forty-five" I responded, wondering if this man was going to kill me.

He proceeded to attach the chains to the back of the trailer and then move his truck into the street. He opened a compartment that was filled with levers, and pulled a red one which extended legs which were going to be used for stabilization from the truck to the ground. He walked around to the other side and did the same.

I stood back, and watched as somehow this man managed to completely lift my trailer out of the ditch and back into the street, using a mini-crane on the back of his truck.

The entire process lasted maybe twenty minutes. Once he was finished, I asked if he would let me take a picture of him. When I did this, his beastly exterior melted away as he looked down at him self fancifully and asked "In THESE clothes?" He reminded me of a girl. I smiled as he posed against the truck for the photo.

Moral of the story: take turns wide and you can never be sure who wants their picture taken.
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I'm Denver-bound, sans-truck.

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