Your scariest moment as a truck driver

A couple of weeks ago I was driving back from Chicago towards Michigan. On I94 I was about 200 yeards from a curve and hit a bumpy section of road. My cellphone was on the dash of my Western Star and the bumps rattled it off the edge. As it fell to the floorboard it hit the key and turned the ignition off right as I was going into the curve. Now with the engine off that means no power steering. I went to trun into the curve as the engine cut out and the wheel went hard. Luckily no one was near me as I went across 2 lanes and almost onto the shoulder before I got the truck started again. Man that wasnt really as bad as some of the other experiences but it sure scared a brick out of me.

 

On a frontage rd in Ill. (hate drivin there to many low clearances) and the business I think im supposed to go to I pass, but the industrial area turns int to a neighborhood (wtf) any way I circle back around back to access rd only to be mid left turn when I realize im not gonna make it and the 1st set rear tandems has already made my the trlr lean toward the dicth. I stop and back up but to no avail I cant clear the corner..because it a dicth there. I back up swing wider but still nothing by this time the off from work I gotta get christmas shopping done ppl are at every corner, so now I dont even have the space to back,back down the street to at least get out of the way so I end up in a complete L and get stuck in the snow. I thought it was cause I was L but put in interlock got me out and then pulled up a bit and backed up till the 4wheeler behind me got the message. turns out there was a fire truck on the other side lol they gave me the thumbs up when i got out the situation. considering ther was a dicth on each side a stop sign telephone pole and nowhere to go outside the lines of the street and keepin it up right just the thought of me tryin to explain what happened I didnt wanna go thru and to top it off the drop yard I was trying to get to was about a mile up the highway.
been driving year and three weeks...

 

Coming thru Madison, WI the 23rd .... the day of the blizzard .... driving east on 90/94 .... all of a sudden see on the other side head lights spinning .... next thing I know they are coming at me .... luckily the 2 - 3 feet of snow in the median stopped them .... otherwise they would have been under my front end

 

For me I was going down a mountain (in NC I think mt airy?) got into a fog bank back around 2004. I could not see past the hood, I could feel the truck leaning as I was going through the curves, Not a good feeling.

I have a cousin who has been an O/O for over 30 years. He told me he was up North one time in a bad snow storm, Car passed him and spun out when it went around him. The car was backwards in front of him looking eyeball to eyeball with him.

 

Anyone caught in the Ike windstorms?

 

full mixer on a steep hill. the road was mud, gravel + wet. i stopped in the middle of the slope and the truck began to slide backwards even with hand brake.

 

Back in my dumb days, I was doing yet another stupid thing in the great state of Texas. Speeding and I were good friends. I would regularly floor the thing - no governors. I was going down a little hill somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, I-10 - wherever it was, it was in between El Paso and San Antonio - the speedometer was pegged to the far right. I won't bother to say what the highest speed on there is - anyway, a deer comes running out in the middle of the road - a BIG deer, stops and freezes. It was twilight and I had my headlights on. I wouldn't have been able to stop that truck to save my life - I switched the headlights off and hoped that thing would move - going that fast the animal and I would have probably had a meeting with our Creator that day. That animal just stood there until the LAST fraction of a second that it could move and get out of my way. I must have been in the part of the prayer about walking through the valley of the shadow of death right about that point......

Another crazy thing was driving in Mexico. They have some areas where the grades are unbelievably steep, no runaway truck ramps, and the particular "thing" I was on had at least a 1,000 foot drop to my right. The 2 lane road was so narrow, 2 trucks coming at each other just barely had enough room to pass by going the opposite directions. I was definitely not used to that kind of driving, heck, trucks didn't have engine brakes on them back then. On the particular occasion I am remember, a truck was coming the opposite direction - I was moving over as far as possible. There was maybe 2 feet of "shoulder" and then the dropoff, not even any guard rails. This other driver came over the line and our side mirrors clanged as we passed by each other - my right steer tire was in the dirt. It took forever to get off that hill and I stopped the truck and kissed the earth when I got done with it.

My only advice is to respect mountain grades - never get the idea that you're a pro at it and don't need to have vigilance when going down one, especially long grades. I have more stories, but I don't think anyone was looking for a book here.

 

VT 9, eastbound toward Brattleboro.

Generally it's your typical mountain 2-lane, in pretty good shape. Being a generally cautious mountain driver, I was actually enjoying it. That part of VT,this time of year is beautiful. So.. here I am, just enjoyin' the drive at about 08:00 on a Friday morning.

20 miles to my destination and 45 left minutes on my clock..

I swear, I really did feel a twinge of "huh?" when I saw the "Steep grade ahead" sign, but not much of one. None of the grades so far had been all that bad, and even with 40,000 pounds on, I'd not had to shift down past 6th.

I should have paid more attention to that "huh" feeling... there's a reason they put that warning up...

As I approached the grade, my heart completely stopped and I was all over the brakes.

The only thought I had was "Where the F is the road?"

I thought I was heading over a cliff or something.

Turns out, it's a 'rapid onset' 14 to 16% grade (them's the numbers DOT gave me). Road's moderately level, then just... drops for about 200 meters.

May not be so bad in these newfangled slope-hood tractors,but driving a long-nose 379 as I do... there's nothing to see but New Hampshire until after the front wheels start dropping over the lip of the grade.

It's a good thing, I think, that I ended up delivering Monday - gave the local hospital time to surgically remove my underwear from my lower intestine.

(for the record, I dropped down to 3rd and still had to keep on the brakes. Fortunately, around the curve at the bottom of the hill the road levels out to a much more sane 4 or 5% slope)