Yesterday, I recovered a stuck 18-wheeler with my 2000
Dakota 4x4.
I was in Wendover Nevada near the Bonneville Salt
Flats, on the Utah line and travelling home to
California from a week of off-roading in Colorado.
Pulling onto I-80, I saw a big yellow tractor and
trailer beyond the pavement where the frontage road
ends and the desert begins. The driver had made a
wrong turn down a road without enough room to turn his
rig around. After driving off into the desert and
circling around he was unable to climb back up onto
the road.
As I drove up onto the freeway I began to wonder what
would happen if I tried to yank him out. Just then I
heard on the CB radio two passing truckers talking
about the stuck truck: "Yup, he's in there pretty
good. And look, he's got his hazard flashers on so the
jackrabbits won't crash into him." It was funny -- but
not for the guy who was stuck. I turned around through
the median and headed back.
The short version of the story is that I was able to
yank him out with a two-inch recovery strap from my
receiver hitch to his front tow hook. We dug away some
of the loose sand and gravel at the edge of the road
where his drive wheels were spinning in air. After a
quick and easy tug to confirm that I couldn't just
pull him in gently, I backed up about three feet and
drove hard forward, braking a few feet beyond the
static length of the recovery strap.
Surprised that neither attachment point had
cannonballed through his windshield or my rear window
and that the tractor and trailer had actually moved a
few inches, I gave it another try. After three
progressivly harder trys we had managed to move the
truck about two feet. Now a drive wheel on the
opposite side was stuck fast against the foot-high
edge of the road.
We shovelled a bit more and extended the landing gear
to disconnect the trailer from the tractor. The driver
then was able to back up a couple of feet to get a
running start without the weight of the trailer. One
last yank and the tractor -- all 20,000 pounds of it
-- popped up over the berm and onto the road.
The truck driver was able to hook up his trailer again
with a much better angle, take a big sweep across the
desert and get a good line on rejoining the road. He
bounced around quite a bit but he got up on the road
with no problems.
No one is more surprised at this than me. In case you
were wondering, my truck is a stock 2000 Club Cab 4x4
Sport with a 4.7 liter engine, automatic transmission,
full-time four-wheel drive, 3.55 gears, and 31-inch
Goodyear Wrangler tires. Before attempting this pull I
aired down to 15 psi.
cheers,
-J.
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