What can you do after a jackknife?

The closest I came to jack knifing was a split second yaw getting over a bridge on an overpass. Temperature was about 26°F and dropping and had just started to rain. I had kicked out of cruise control long before the temperature dropped below freezing.

As I came up the rise and hit the bridge deck I was easy on the throttle, almost no boost at all. Suddenly the tractor yawed to the left by a foot. I immediately backed off the throttle and steered right into the yaw and it snapped back straight in a split second.

I took the next exit to refill my coffee and assess the weather. The ice storm that had been about 100 miles in diameter and centered over Amarillo had grown into a 350 mile diameter monster centered over Big Springs on I-20, directly on my route.

According to the radar I was already in the Eastern edge of the storm and it was a light sprinkle. No problem. If THAT's all there is to it, I can handle that. Just engage the power divider and get on with it. So I pushed on into the night.

It became more interesting in a hurry.

First hard freezing rain, followed by hard snow. Snow built up to about six inches deep in the hammer lane. I kept it in the travel lane, which helped reduce the snow.

Then the lightening kicked in. You know how you get that tunnel effect driving at night in heavy snow as your headlights blaze through all those white flakes? That became interspersed with lightening striking all around. With each bolt ALL the snowflakes in the sky were lit up, with shadows extending away from the strike.

Amazing night. I pulled into a truck stop west of Pecos at daybreak to turn the wheel over to my teammate. It was bone dry, past the storm. The sun was out. The entire truck and trailer was covered in at least an inch of ice.

 

I never have jackknifed. What you see mostly in the YouTube vids are people just turning too sharp and getting the sleeper into the trailer, not a jackknife going down the road.