Winter Driving Stories

I don't blame you there. The warmer it is the more dangerous it is when you start getting into the Icy stuff.

 

The morning after the storm. This was another truck that was parked during the ice storm.

 

Going up is the easy part. Coming down is another story.

 

I hit a couple ice storms like that in Oklahoma this last winter. It's no fun at all lol.

 

With your 1 year experiance you have only drivin through 1 winter. Now I realize I don't have much more but I have driven the roads you speak of and lots of canada in winter and have never once taken the COWBOY mentality to blow someones doors of on ice covered roads. The big question is when you do end up in the ditch will you share it here on this site????

 

Heck I slid in t he ditch and I was parked. Took a pull out for the loaded truck and just as he went by I slide down in the bar ditch. He stopped and hooked a chain on to the pintle hook and pulled me back up on the haul road. The End.

 

There is a 50 mile stretch of I-81 from Watertown to Syracuse that is usually pure hell until Lake Ontario freezes. Not uncommon for it to snow a foot an hour and you can't see 15 ft. The road is under 6" of snow. If you look at the radar it will be clear everywhere except for this dark blue ball right over I-81. It gets so bad you learn to drive by feeling the rumblestrips.....feel the rumblestrip under the driver tire drift right....under the right tire then drift left.....just make sure you can tell which tire.

Sometimes it's like that for days on end and you have to make 10 trips a week through that hell. Nothing you can do you just have to get through it and then you drive out of it and the sun is shining.

I imagine the visibilty ain't too hot in the lee of Lake Superior and Lake Huron neither.

 

Hmmm. You personally witnessed him stop 5 times before he got to the bottom. I would think after he stopped the 1st time he would be out of your sight for good.

Sounds like a supertrucker story to me

 

There's a fine line between confidence in your abilities and recklessness. If your "super trucker" stories are accurate then you sir are squarely on the side of reckless. Just because you can regularly "blow the doors off" folks who choose to drive like they have some common sense doesn't make you right. It just means that WHEN you eventually wreck it'll be a nasty one. I don't wish that on anybody but with an attitude like yours it's not a matter of if but when.

Just for the record I grew up and learned to drive in VT. Started driving truck in the Northwest (mostly WA, OR, UT, ID and CO) and I have more than my fair share of winter driving under my belt. One thing I learned really quickly is to respect the weather conditions. I've lost count of folks like yourself who put their schedule (or their pride) before safety and wind up wrecked in the ditch or the median. I've yet to come across a load that was worth my life or anyone else's for that matter. So you keep on driving the way you like. I'll smile and wave when you "blow my doors off". And I'll smile and wave when I see you in the ditch 10 miles up the road.

 

There will always be those who will drive to fast for conditions.

Once driving on solid ice west of Fort Worth on 20 I was deriving along at about 25 to 35 MPH. A fried come up behind me & passed me running about 70 MPH, called my handle & I answered him. He said, "Come on, I know your like me & got to be there, come on, lets go."

I answered him kindly saying, "Go on, I'm going to stay about this speed, I'm going to try & be sure to get there without wrecking, be safe."

His reply was smarty as if he was trying to get me to do what I knew better than to do, & I replied to him.

"Go ahead & drive like that, me, I'm staying at this speed, & when I see you setting in the medium I will wave & keep going, for all of us driving out here will be much safer with you setting in the medium, your an accident looking for a place to happen, I just hope you don't take someone else with you."

He did not answer back, about 30 miles up the I-20 he was setting jackknifed in the medium with a trooper setting there with his lights going, the trailer had hit his sleeper on the conventional KW he was driving & it looked destroyed it.

Later that morning I called my deliver place & told them about the condition & that I might be a bit late. They told me that would be OK, we had rather have you a bit late instead of wrecked them be about 2 to 3 days late.

I was two hours late at Moorspark, CA, & they did not complain the least bit but said, "Thanks for getting here when you did & unloaded me quite fast." Late that evening I loaded at Riverside & was on my way back east at about 9:30 PM.

Best be safe than sorry, its best to be late than not getting there, yet some will hammer down no matter the weather or road conditions.