I realized I haven't posted a blog entry for a bit.
While I was chatting with a friend (Malady) this morning, I was reminded of one of my favorite (least favorite at the time) instances while driving truck. I pulled a set of double flatbeds, which made my tractor, lead trailer, tongue, and pup 98' long. I had an adjustable tongue on the pup, which went from three feet to six feet, so the offtrack on the pup was considerably large, meaning that I had to swing REALLY wide with my tractor if I didn't want the pup in the ditch. I almost always pulled it with the tongue spread because it gave me a smoother ride in the cab, something very desirable as I didn't have air ride on either trailer, so the jerk from every bump they hit was very noticeable in the cab.
Anyway, one day, in 1995, I was in Seattle, very close to where the Kingdome stood I got directions from a place I was heading to load up something heading to Spokane, WA. I called the shipper to get directions, and the woman I was talking to told me to go NORTH to the viaduct. Well, I was north of it already, so I told her exactly where I was and asked her to verify. She insisted that I go north, so I figured, well, I don't live in Seattle, so maybe there's a viaduct I don't know about.
There wasn't.
It's important to note that I was south of Seattle's city center. I was SOUTH of it. Going NORTH put me IN the city center.
They were doing road construction.
They were down to one lane on most streets. I had the tongue spread on my pup. Hardly mattered though, because if I had closed it, I would still be 95' long.
While I was good at maneuvering my tractor and trailers, and even taught how to pull doubles, there is no physical way to turn from one very narrow lane to another very narrow lane with a vehicle that long.
Construction men were moving orange barrels (also known as Washingto State Flowers) for me while I called Miss Faulty Directions every name in the book, and then some! They must have wondered why some fool with a set of doubles ended up in downtown Seattle, while they were working on the roads. Well, nevermind working on the roads! That was just the icing on the cake!
Need I say that Miss Faulty Directions received an earful when I finally got to the shipper, where I was picking up 65,000 pounds of steel, to sit on my 40,000 pounds of tractor and trailers? Thank God I didn't end up in downtown Seattle loaded!
Actually, when I walked into the office, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Alright; who gave me directions?" That may not be an exact quote, but I don't talk like that anymore.
The receptionist, in a very quiet and careful voice asked, "Were they wrong?"
I explained what happened, and she said. "It wasn't me." She then pointed me in the direction I needed to go to express my opinion of Miss Faulty Directions, and to tell her there is only ONE viaduct in Seattle!
Thankfully, getting out of Seattle after loading was no problem at all, as the viaduct connected with Interstate 5, which half a mile north, connected with Interstate 90, where I would head straight to Spokane.
Anyway, I hope you are having a better day than I had that day, 25 years ago, in Downtown Seattle.
I can laugh at it now.
Ha.... Ha.... Ha...
No. I guess I can't. I think I'm scarred for life. (kidding)
Comments
Bad Day
Four decades ago, I was an underwriter for a company that insured over the road truckers.
One of the companies we insured was hauling fruit from Fla to MN. On the way down one of their truckers took a "shortcut" and hit an overhead brdge -- shearing off four inches of his refrigerated trailer.
He was laid up for a couple of weeks while the trailer was repaired. He then proceeded to FLA and picked up a load.
On the way back -- he hit the same bridge from the other side.
That's a BAD day.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I guess!
I guess!
In Spokane, on Division Street, we have a bridge that's like 12'8". While Division is the major North / South street (divides East and West) trucks are warned to go to another street for that block. It's a railroad bridge, made long before trailers were the height they are now.
At least once a month we have a truck getting stuck under the bridge. Interestingly, 95% of the time, it's a Swift truck. In the trucking industry, we always referred to Swift as an acronym for "Sure Wish I'd Finished Training." J.B. Hunt, was "Just Been Hired, Unfortunately Not Trained."
Everytime I hear about a Swift truck getting stuck, I reflect on how they're the most inaptly company around.
Another time, I was in Industry California, and I was travelling on the 60. I came to a spot they were closing. Thankfully, they hadn't closed it yet, and I was travelling at 60MPH, not something a truck often does in the LA area.
A dump truck had pulled out with his bed still raised, and tried to go under the freeway.
Not a good day for him either. I'll bet he didn't have a job after that.
Hugs!
Rosemary
Worse things happen at sea.
As most readers will know, in a former life I was ship master (That's a captain of merchant ships.)
In Forty years of seafaring all over I've had some pretty bad days and some spectacularly hilarious ones. The funniest occasion was on the Manchester Ship canal in North West England.
At Mode wheel lock as one approaches Manchester there used to be a large soap and detergent factory on the South bank. Like every factory and city on the canal, it used the canal as an open sewer to discharge whatever effluents it could get away with and, as a consequence the Manchester Ship canal was probably one of the most toxic and polluted drains in the UK if not on Earth. If you took an old British silver sixpence (Same size as a dime) and placed it into a tablespoon-full of Canal water you would not see the coin in the spoon. That's how bad it was.
Anyway, while we were sailing up the canal, we got a VHF message alerting us to some soap-sud spillage that had been 'accidentally' spilt into the canal immediately above Mode Wheel lock. It was a wet, foggy night and just the sort of night that the factories got rid of their most offensive products when nobody would see them.
The thick concentrated detergent had been discharged just above the levelling weir by the lock and consequently it was tumbling over the waterfall and generating vast amounts of pink foam. As our ship approached the lock we could not see the foam spread all over the canal until we approached the lock and the lock-side working lights illuminated the debacle. We were unable to stop because we would lose steerage way so we simply had to continue into the lock because there was nowhere else to go.
Think piston and cylinder.
As my ship plunged into the lock the water simply slipped by between lock wall and ship but the foam just started to build up and up in front of the ship until eventually it piled up to spread all over the bows and onto the lock-side. Needless to say there was pandemonium as our bow tug was completely covered in the foam and men everywhere were running for their lives to avoid being engulfed by the foam made toxic by the polluted canal water. We had to spend the remainder of the night in the lock while the ship was hosed down with fresh water and when we got to Manchester, the superintendent wanted to know why our normally white accommodation had turned pink.
Pink foam toxic waste sounds like a tg story waiting to happen
Pink foam industrial waste sounds like a tg transformation story waiting to happen.
Too bad real life doesn't seem to work that way; nor will exposure to radiation
give you superpowers- unless getting sick and dying counts as a superpower.
It just ain't fair I tell ya! Although I'm still holding out for that meteor
full of alien girl virus landing in my backyard. I am ever the realist.
~Hugs, Veronica
.
And whenever I hear of a trucker having low-bridge issues
I think of that old song Wolf Creek Pass by CW McCall,
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6LzWZYWpOU )
with lyrics worthy of Shel Silverstein:
"Sign says clearance to the twelve-foot line,
but the chickens was stacked to thirteen-nine.
Well we shot that tunnel at a hundred-and-ten,
like gas through a funnel + eggs through a hen,
and we took that top row of chickens off
slicker'n scum off a Loosiana swamp..."
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Well he rared back, cocked
Well he rared back, cocked his leg, and stepped down as hard as he could on the brake. Pushed it right to the floor and the pedal stayed right there on the floor. Said it was sorta like stepping on a plum.
I'm not exactly sure what malaria germs look like, however.
Great song!
I went over Wolf Creek Pass once with my Dad. Pagosa Springs is like 10 miles away from the mountain. Not sure how they got that far. I guess that's the joke. LOL
Hugs!
Rosemary
I like that song but
I like that song but CW McCall took plenty of license on the actual details of the trip down from the pass into Pagosa Springs.
Your friend
Crash
LOL. Sounds like one time I
LOL. Sounds like one time I didn't have bubble bath, and I used Dawn in a hot tub. I put a bit more than I meant in the tub. the suds just got bigger and bigger and bigger as the tub accumulated maybe three inches of water. LOL
Whoops!
Hugs!
Rosemary
The Foam!
It's a horror story. Like "The Fog" or "The Mist" only pink.
The gnarly captain, about to clock up 40 years at sea, ploughs forward slow ahead taking his dirty tramp steamer into what he guesses might be a toxic mass. But what damage can some suds do?
As they emerge his first mate look across and sees a woman where the skipper stood, wearing a pink leotard with black patterned leggings, her long white hair over her face. She throws the hair back.
"I don't know about you number one, but I intend to be disgraceful!"
But I don't do magical transformations
Maryanne
Uh... I think you just DID magical transformations, Maryanne
Even if penned in jest it was a swell little tale.
Many of the best are tongue-in-cheek like this was,
a tradition dating back to the early days of fictionmania.
And it's a wonderful origins story for our delightfully
disgraceful resident super-hussy Beverly.
~hugs again, V
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Rental Truck Accident Season
Late summer in Boston as students are moving into their school year housing sees many rental truck decapitations on the roads either side of the Charles River. Both Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side and Storrow Drive on the Boston side have height restrictions due to low bridges. Most of these accidents are rentals by drivers who never needed to worry about height restrictions in their personal vehicles.
Michelle B
There is a
'bridge strike' season here in the mother country
yup, every year, the first week of September it comes, several double deck buses used to transport the 'next generation' will get unplanned conversions to open toppers. The reason, new hire drivers or drivers used to driving single deckers taking short cuts that a single decker is okay for and the timing, the first week the schools go back after the summer. Unfortunately there are often casualties, even deaths.
Then of course there are the strikes due to incorrect signage - there was one bridge not far from my former abode that lost 6" of clearance when they resurfaced the carriageway and it never occurred to anyone in the roads department to check - result, a strike by a driver who always used the road although it was tight for his vehicle, wedged the thing good and tight, they had to deflate the tyres and very slowly ease it out.
Quite famously in the ancient city of Lincoln there are stretches of city wall that date back to @ 250AD when it was founded by the Romans. Some of these walls are barely more than foundations but a stretch including the northern gated exit is still extant to @ 20 feet and has a road passing through it. It survived Mr Hitlers bombs, centuries of quarrying and many years of neglect pretty much intact until the 1960's when a haulier decided to drive through despite the height restriction signs - yup, the Romans didn't build stuff to be pantechnicon proof! It has been restored and these days all commercial vehicles are banned from the route.
Madeline Anafrid Bell
When driving truck there is
When driving truck there is always the danger threat compact snow and ice would build up and decrease the clearance under bridges as well. Thankfully, pulling a flatbed it wasnt usually a problem. Only if I had a very high load or cardboard or crushed popcans.
Hugs!
Rosemary
Pseudo "Trucking" disgrace.
I hope that you will not be too inflamed at me. I was driving a 93' Dodge Cummins Ram that "looked" like it was very heavy duty, but it was very underpowered. This was before my TG stuff really manifested and I was on a bunch of legal drugs. Looking back, I should not have been driving anything. My then wife demanded to have this 28 foot 5th wheel. On any hill at all, I was slowed to 35 mph. We were going camping, headed for Eastern Oregon, East of Prineville. We decided to stop at Timberline Lodge on the way over there. It was quite a huffer to get up there and while I was hunting for a place to park, I swung around, and ran over two parked cars because I forgot the wheels on the Trailer. Another year or so and I'd be living as a woman and taking even more drugs.
This story was really too stupid to own up to.
Gwen
They were doing road construction.
I used to drive for 3pl out of Portland. We often did international shipments for one of our biggest clients. So I've made the run to SeaTac many a time. So my question is, "Just when are they not doing road construction in Seattle?"
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Have a railroad bridge here that eats trucks too.
Best story of that one was from a cop friend of mine, who had went on a call of yet another truck getting stuck under the bridge. Story goes that he walked up to the trucker and said, "You got stuck under the bridge huh?"
Trucker came right back at him and said, "Nope, I was hauling this bridge and I ran out of gas."
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Perfect!
The Colossus of Rhodes!?
Donna
Lead a charmed life
Pulling and backing rigs and trailers long before I was sixteen.My first legal license at age fourteen. At sixteen was what was called a chauffeurs license, it was commercial license before CDL Never squeezed the corners because that trailer is going to take a shorter route. Never backed over anything. There is a blind spot and that trailer paints a bulls eye on it if one doesn't get out and survey first. Backing a tandem rig isn't that hard if one treats the one behind the cab as the cab (reverse thinking). Think of every driver out there is an idiot and has no concept of what it takes to stop a big rig nor we need two lanes before the turn and two lanes after before we get settled back into taking only a single lane. Charmed life, never had to drive in the big cities. Still carry the license, not sure how much longer they will let me keep it? No longer endorsed for hazardous waste, explosives, or flammable liquids. Still haul hay, grain, livestock. heavy equipment.
Hugs People
Barb
Life is meant to be lived. I did, I have.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Not to worry
I know a guy who at 83 was still operating heavy equipment and driving the oversized rig to get it to the job site. He finally retired when his arthritic knees made a misery to climb onto and off of the equipment. The state was fine with him to keep driving.
I'm 75 and just got my DOT physical so I'm good for another year. My Class A CDL is good until next March. I expect to renew it for another 6 years then. We'll see.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann