A fella, Just a fella, a regular fella

I saw a fuel oil truck get stuck this morning. He was at the top of a hill on a dead end road trying to back into a drive way. The driveway is a Y with the road and tilts down the hill too. There was a lot of ice on the road and driveway and the truck driver went in slow. When he went to give it gas (actually diesel) to back up off the the road, his traction didn't hold and the back end slid sideways downhill along the road, off the driveway and into the snowbank. Meanwhile, the front end slid also leaving him perpendicular to the road with his front wheels off the road on the opposite side. It's a narrow road and he was completely straddling it. When I saw him, he was trying to "rock it" and get some traction. I walked up there and found him with all rear wheels (duallies) maybe 12" deep in the snow, about a third of the way up the tire.

I had thought I was going to be able to say "I'll just go get my tractor and pull you out". It certainly seemed like the easy way out. But when I got up there, I looked at things and did not like what I saw. I wouldn't be able to get uphill of him and I didn't like the idea of pulling him down hill on top of me. I also thought about the fuel truck that went off the road a while ago that poisoned a bunch of peoples wells with MBTE. I wouldn't want to be connected with something like that. Further more, he was stuck really good and I don't know if my 3k lb tractor was going to pull out a truck filled with maybe 10k gallons of fuel oil.

I don't like to leave a fella stranded though. The driver and I looked at things and I offered to get a shovel. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get him out, but I was willing to work with him. From the barn I got a shovel. Since I didn't locate a second shovel immediately, I brought a heavy bar instead. And I also grabbed a pair of old 3" thick 12" wide boards about 36" long. I've tried using boards to get under a mired tired. Usually, they just spit out the back at 40 miles per hour. But, who knows and I couldn't think of anything else to do.

So we dug with the shovel, jammed the boards under the wheels and he climbed back in the truck. And it didn't do it. The truck broke one board but couldn't climb onto either. it was too deep.

The driver tried backing up (gently, we didn't want to get stuck worse), but it was too deep to go back either.

We hemmed and hawed. Looked at it from more angels. He tried rocking the truck again. The tires smoked. But he only got deeper. Part of me said don't do anything to make this worse. He has fuel oil in there, if it spills, it could get on my land, into my well. I certainly don't want to have to explain to somebodies wife what happened to her husband that cold day. And I definitely don't want someone to have a similar conversation with my wife.

I don't know whether it is because I like a challenge, that I don't want to leave a fella stranded. Or maybe I am just a nosy neighbor who gets into other peoples business, but I kept trying new ideas.

The only thing I could think of was if we couldn't raise the truck out of the hole, dig a ramp out of the hole for the tires. But we are talking about the edge of a frozen gravel road, it was not easy digging. All we could do was chip at it with the pry bar. Maybe we managed to chip down 4" or so, not a lot. We did that on both sides. The driver got back in and tried rocking it again. And low and behold, he got it out. He was still perpendicular to the road pointed down the embankment on the other side, but he was out of the ditch.

I spotted him as he eased it back to the rim of the ditch cutting the wheel back. And then the other way going forward. He didn't have more than 18" back and forth to work with. We even got to use those boards, in the hole as a bridge. After the second or third try, though, he couldn't get enough steering traction to turn further up the hill. When he tried to go forward I could see the front end lift up and then skip straight forward regardless of of the direction the wheels were pointed. He tried that a couple of times, but even though he wasn't in the ditch, he was still stuck.

Finally, he did what had gotten him trouble in the first place. He revved the engine, cut the wheels up hill and let out the clutch. The rear tires spun, losing traction and sliding to the side downhill and the whole truck pivoted around that front left tire. In short order the truck was close to parallel to the road. He was able to roll back down the hill and straighten out the rest of the way. From there he was able to get enough momentum to racing up the hill and launch into the driveway.

At about this point, the able bodied young man from the house the driver was trying to deliver to came out, walked the dog and went back inside without saying a word.

At no point before the truck's tires cleared the ditch did I think we were going to be able to get that truck un-stuck. Before he left, the driver thanked me for my help and the tools and expressed how happy he was that he would not be on the wall of shame at work.