Carhaul Stories

After Katrina, spent a lot of time hauling used down and GMAC salvage back north. One load happened to have a Vette that had been in the showroom with top down when the dealership roof failed. The ceiling tiles inside this car looked like 500 lbs of puke, and I didn't have a clue where the release was to be able to close the top, and wasn't about to dig around in that slop to find it!

I had the forklift load it on the nose, facing forward. That burnt orange SOB got me so much attention we finally just went to different channel. And at every scale the scalemasters are breaking their necks looking up to make sure they weren't seeing things.

I didn't really have a choice on where to load it, but by the time we got back to Sioux Falls, I was sure wishing I'd have had a spot to hide the ###### thing!

 

I picked up a late model Corvette around 2007 at D/FW auction. The thing that was unique about this particular model vet is that the handle to open up the door was way down at the bottom of the seat on the left hand side and it was the first year that this had ever been tried.

I jumped inside the Corvette and closed the door and then for some reason I needed to get out of the vet and I couldn't get out because I didn't have a clue in the world where the door handle was at. Sat there for 20 minutes trying to find this stupid handle and then finally a driver comes along and I'm beating on the window trying to get his attention. He finally noticed me over there.

He opened the door and showed me where the handle was at. I couldn't believe it.
Dumbest thing I have ever seen!!

I picked up a navigator at Shakopee auto auction south of Minneapolis that was having a starting problem. When I was ready to load the Navigator into the belly I grabbed my jump box started her up disconnected and close the hood. I pulled the Navigator into the belly and I turned her off and started to climb over the seat so that I could jump out the back. This was when I realized that I could not get out the back doors because I forgot about the child protection switches. It was impossible to open up the door wide enough to get out of the front and I couldn't get out the back door either.

It was 3 in the morning and I was the only one out there trying to get loaded while everyone else was sleeping like I should have been. After sitting there for a while trying to figure out what I was going to do next I finally came to the conclusion the only way I was going to get out is I was going to have to kick out one of the windows which I did. So here I am sweeping glass up at an auto auction at 3 in the morning.

Lessons Learned

 

Glad to hear there are still some of the E & L guys around. Put in 25 years with them myself, retired 2001 just before all the crap started. Got my 30 pension and ran away. I've run into couple of the guys over the years at truck stops and what not, ah for the good old days, not. Be safe out there if your still driving like I am.

 

Those Vettes with that handle had a push button to electrically pop the door latch. Our sales rep got locked in one at the Shakopee auction. Battery had enough juice to pop the latch once, but not twice. He didn't see the emergency releases you're talking about, either. He almost froze before someone saw him, and put a jump box on it so he could get out. I sent the boss the Blondestar vid, which everyone in the auction got from him before the rep even got warmed back up.

 

Learned that lesson as well yrs ago. Took about 20 min between panic & debating the cheapest alternate escape route. The irritating part is I had let it idle about 30 min while moving/unloading other crap on the trailer thinking it would charge up. It was used, had sat all winter on the dealer lot & the alternators on those things are toys.

 

One of the first cars I had ever put on my current rig was an in the process of being renovated, a 1972 Olds Cutlas. Picked it up in south Miami from this 16 yo kid who had sold it to a company in Sherman, TX.

The car was hard as hell to get started and in the frigid air of Miami it was almost impossible to keep it running until it warmed up. So I had decided I would put it on overhead backward. I start up the trailer and almost ready to make the final climb up onto the overhead rack.

What I didn't know was the kid had taken the exhaust pipe and routed it underneath the physical body of the car, not tucked up into the body as was original. So im backing up and a U Bolt hangs up on a cross member of the trailer. I can't move at all.

I put the car in park, emergency brake on I left the car running because of the previous starting and running problems. I get out, grab my hammer and proceed to bang on that cross member to get it lose of the U Bolt. I get it lose but apparently the car was in a bind of some sort and when it breaks lose of the anchor point it sort of "hops" and when it settles back down it starts rolling down the trailer, obviously the emergency brake was worthless and come to find out later, the transmission would occasionally jump into gear.

Scared to death I start running along side the trailer somehow thinking I could do something, it ended up with the left front wheel in the well and the right front off the left side of trailer. All the while the guy I got the thing from was taking photo after photo. Then he asks "what are you gonna do now?" I was a bit pissed off by now. A heavy tow truck to get it back on the trailer and $450 later I put it in the belly. I do NOT haul old cars anymore!

 

OMG driver
That has got to be the best car hauling story I've ever heard! Talk about a bad day. Those small cars are the worst. I managed to misjudge the deck one time and got a wheel off the deck and in between the decks. I had a 72 442. They were hot rods out of the factory but they were notorious for overheating if you tried to run them hard. I eventually had an after market oversized radiator installed in mine.

Great story.

 

Love hearing old carhauling stories! I rode along with my father (illegal by company policy) many a times back in the 60's and 70's. This was with Anchor Motor Freight, F.J. Boutell, and then back with Anchor Motor Freight. Had many great times and some good stories to go along with it too!