Christmas Eve

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas Eve

I haven’t blogged for awhile. A lot has happened. December has been a slow month. We had not gotten a week of over 1700 miles. In a two week period we had 5 restarts. We had made it down to Laredo where we were 106 on the board ant it took us 3 days to get a 700 mile load to Savanna, Ga. We then went to Spartanburg, SC, and then we went to the GM in Lake Orion, Michigan with a load of tires. Again we got stuck at the Taylor Terminal in cold weather and finally got a load out of less than 400 miles to Indiana. Then we went to Huston. After getting a load of 780 mile from Huston that we picked up on Thursday to be delivered in St. Joe, Missouri on Monday I called my dispatch and complained. He said to drop the load in Joplin and get a different load. We got a load in Joplin to take to Seattle, Washington. We had 1990 miles to do in 3 days bad weather. This is where the trouble started.

As some of you know Shelly and I were in an accident with the semi. We are in La Grande, Oregon. It is a very rural area located in northern Oregon near Washington State in some very serious mountains. We met a weather front that came in through Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon area. The news channels are billing this as the worse storm in Seattle in 40 years and Portland since the 1939. The truck is not drivable and we have no transportation. The closest car rental is in Boise, Idaho, a 170 mile away through mountainous snow covered roads. The bus lines are shut down, we have no trucks coming this way that I can get a ride with. We have even tried cab services and have tried to get an insurance adjuster to take me to Boise but the roads are near impassable and are closed in some areas. We have found no one to get us out of here. Heavy snows are predicted everyday through Sunday. When we do finally get to Boise and get a car we have 2200 miles to drive to get home. We have Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. This is to give you some prospective of how far we have to drive. Most of this area is under some serious snow and winter advisory. We have had -6 degrees weather with 50+ MPH winds with blowing snow with white out conditions several times. I can’t express how upsetting all this is. I am not looking forward to driving on these roads especially after wrecking on slick roads. I am having problems sleeping as I keep recalling the accident. It had to be one of the longest occurring accidents that anyone has ever had.

The accident

I had been driving all day. We had started at 4:30 in the morning trying to get some miles in, in some very adverse conditions. I had driven on snow covered roads most of the day. I had stopped and chained the truck, which is a difficult job in these conditions, but had removed. The snowing had stopped and the sun was shining and the temperature had got up to 28 – 30 degrees. A lot of road crews were out clearing the roads and the roads had greatly improved. We had not made any miles and we were finally able to make up some time. Right after reaching la Grande, Oregon we started into another high elevation pass and the roads deteriorated quickly. The traffic was slowed because of a jackknifed truck carrying radio active material. After getting by this we started down a long grade. It took us awhile to get past that and we started down a long hill that didn’t look too bad and the traffic was light from the jackknifed truck delay. I had passed it about a half mile and had got my speed up to about 45 when I started sliding. I was on a long downgrade with a large drop off (200- 300 ft.) to my right and I was in a curve turning left. I was in the slow lane with the tractor turned sideways facing the center barrier but I continued to slide in a forward motion. Shelly was in the bunk so I woke her up to let her know that we were going to wreck. She started to getup to get Sweet Pea when the truck got traction and slammed us straight into the center barrier hard. I had no control over the direction. When we hit, everything in the back came crashing forward and something hit Shelly in the head and knocked her out for a minute. We were jammed into the barrier with the trailer blocking the road in a curve on a downgrade with very slick road conditions and I knew that there were a lot of trucks behind us getting cleared pass the last wreck. I got on the CB to get them stopped. I was afraid that trucks would come running into us. After the traffic stopped I was able to back up and get it out of the jackknife and clear a lane. The truck is in pretty bad shape and could not be driven. We slide for at least a half a mile so I had plenty of time to know that we were going to crash. It was in slow motion and it took some time for it all to transpire but nothing I tried made any difference in the direction I was headed. Sliding sideways down a mountain in curves on ice wasn’t going to lead to very good results. We are very thankful that we were able to walk away from it and that no one else was involved.

Driving a truck is one of the most difficult jobs that you can do. It is rated as the 4th most dangerous job in America. The hours are horrendous. You drive, pickup and deliver at all hours, deal with all types of weather, traffic, road construction and conditions, DOT, and then the people at the stops. You have inadequate places to park, eat, and bathe. But without truck drivers doing their job you would be hungry and naked. If trucks shutdown, in three day you would have no food in the stores, no gas for your cars, and no materials for your job. The country would come to a stand still and people would panic.

We are ready to go home and leave all this to others, but even this is proving to be a real challenge. I am not sure what I will be doing but I have had enough of this.