Newbie on Ice

The night before last, we were heading from Amarillo towards OK City on I-40. It was about 4 am and the roads were a little slippery since they had about an inch of snow. I was taking it easy since it was a little slick and making sure I kept a good distance between myself and the other trucks out there. Came up over a hill and on the other side, the road turned from a little slippery, to a sheet of ice -- it was a downhill curve. Needless to say, my trailer started to slide sideways. I couldn't tell you exactly what I did except to say that all I could think of was to let the jakes slow me down and keep my tractor in front of my trailer. My exclamation of "oh ****" woke up my co-driver and he jumped out of the bunk in time to see me come out of it. Once I got on solid ground, I pulled over where it was safe and started to shake. Co-driver said I did an excellent job keeping it on the road and he was very impressed. We proceeded carefully to a safe spot and took a break for a couple of hours until it was light. Roads were much better then. Quite a scary experience, but I was thankful that the Lord was obviously watching out for me and that whatever 'instincts' I had that took over were right in that case. Wasn't my first time on slippery roads, but definitely the first time on a skating rink. We passed lots of mutilated big trucks in the median yesterday -- all the way through Oklahoma. At least 8 or 9 twisted wrecks -- and there is nothing uglier than the bottom of a big rig. Just wanted to post this to remind everyone to be careful out there. It's not only the Northern states that have bad winter driving conditions. We've run into some of the worst ones this year in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. So, please remember that it is important to get the freight there on time, but they'd rather have the freight a little late than spread all over a freeway median somewhere.