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By George L. Nitti
A tractor-trailer, attempting to reach a distribution center near Bridgeport, Ohio, had gone somewhere it never should have been, especially in winter conditions. After missing the correct route, the driver traveled more than a mile and a half down a narrow rural road coated with snow and ice. The road sloped downhill, tightened to barely the width of the truck, and ended at a creek.
“It probably made it three or four miles from the distribution center,” said Chad Coulson, owner and lead tow operator at Bill’s Towing in Bridgeport, Ohio. “He found himself on this road that he was on, traveled a mile and a half or so back that road, and it was snow and ice down over the hill and found his way to a creek.”
The night the call came in, Bill’s Towing initially dispatched a 50-ton rotator. But once their tow operator arrived on scene, the plan changed immediately.
“He got there, looked at it, and said he’s not taking our rotator down that road,” Coulson said. “You couldn’t even walk down it.”
With the road too slick and steep to safely deploy a heavy duty wrecker, the team made decision to use a different kind of equipment.
A Skid Steer Solution
The next day, Bill’s Towing returned with a Bobcat T770 skid steer outfitted with a heavy-duty winch box, an unconventional but increasingly vital recovery tool in rural terrain.
“It’s our Bobcat skid steer with the winch box,” Coulson explained. “We decided to recover the next morning using that skid steer so we could actually get down in there and travel that road the way it was.”
The winch system mounted on the skid steer is rated between 30,000 and 35,000 pounds and carries approximately 150 feet of wire rope. While that may sound limiting on paper, the setup proved to be the safest and most effective option given the conditions.
“The winch will only hold 150 foot of cable,” Coulson said. “So we’d pull out 150 foot, winch him up 150 foot, then set him there and keep repeating that process.”
Inch by Inch, Uphill
The recovery began by hooking to the trailer and winching the unit backward roughly 100 yards until the crew reached a wider spot in the road. From there, they were able to turn the truck around and begin the long pull uphill—this time with the tractor facing forward. From that point on, it was a methodical, stationary process.
“There was no way we could track pulling him up the hill with how steep it was without spinning out ourselves,” Coulson said. “We’d set the skid steer, dig it in, winch him up, hold him there, back up paying out cable, reset the machine, and start the process again.”
The climb stretched more than a mile and a quarter, with some sections offering no margin for error.
“The road was as wide as the truck and trailer, and there was about a 200-foot drop on the driver’s side,” Coulson said. “Every time we had to reset the cable, there was the risk of him sliding back down the hill.”
Ice, snow, terrain, and gravity all worked against the operation—but patience and planning won out. It took hours of repetitive pulls to get the truck safely back to the top.
Why Skid Steers Matter in Rural Recoveries
While skid steers with winch boxes aren’t standard equipment everywhere, Coulson says they’re essential in rural areas like southeastern Ohio.
“We use them a lot around here,” he said. “Drivers follow GPS all the time, and it puts them places they shouldn’t be. Honestly, it’s safer for us to use that than taking our high-dollar wreckers down roads like that.”
The investment is significant. By the time the skid steer and winch system are purchased and outfitted, the cost can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Coulson says the safety benefits and equipment protection make it worthwhile.
“It’s just easier and safer,” he said.
A Fortunate Ending
Once the semi reached the top of the hill, conditions improved. The roadway was clear enough for the driver to continue under escort back to a main road.
“He was able to drive away,” Coulson said. “We got him escorted back out, and he was able to make his delivery.”
Right Equipment, Right Time
In the end, the recovery demonstrated the importance of good judgment, a lot of patience, and of course using the right tool for the job.
“Bad timing for that guy,” Coulson said, “and right equipment at the right time.”
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By George L. Nitti
When crews from Ricky’s Towing of Amarillo, Texas, arrived on Interstate 40, the recovery was considered high-risk for a reason increasingly familiar to towers: a damaged electric vehicle with an unpredictable battery. Owned by Ricky Cantu, the company was responding to a vehicle transport that had been rear-ended by a semi, damaging several vehicles, including a nearly new Tesla crushed at both ends.
At the scene, operators checked for heat, odors, and visible signs of battery compromise. Nothing appeared wrong. Still, the Tesla was handled as a potential hazard. That decision proved critical.
The crash occurred July 15, and the Tesla was placed inside a newly purchased Firebox, a steel containment unit designed to isolate damaged electric vehicles. Almost 3 weeks later, smoke began rising from the box.
Employees spotted it around 9 a.m. and immediately contacted the fire department. “We’re open 24/7, and luckily we had a driver and a dispatcher on site,” Cantu said. “They saw smoke and called it in right away.”
When firefighters arrived minutes later, the Tesla was fully engulfed inside the Firebox. Crews flooded the container, submerging the vehicle beyond the roofline. The fire did not spread. For more than 13 hours, the box bubbled as the lithium-ion battery continued burning beneath the surface.
“You could tell there was still a fire under there,” Cantu said. “That battery stayed hot for hours.”
The Firebox—an investment of roughly $52,000—performed as designed, containing the blaze and protecting surrounding property. Nearby vehicles, including brand-new jet skis stored just feet away, were unharmed. Without containment, Cantu said, the outcome could have been catastrophic.
“We don’t have room to give every EV a 50-foot radius,” he explained. “With the winds we get here—60 or 70 miles an hour—one EV fire could take out the whole yard.”
Why EVs Pose a Threat During Storage
Unlike traditional vehicle fires, EV battery fires can ignite days or even weeks after a crash. Current guidance recommends isolating or containing damaged electric vehicles for 30 days, even when no warning signs are present.
In this case, the Tesla ignited. “We don’t know what caused it,” Cantu said. “It could’ve been internal damage or a pinched wire. The problem is, you don’t shut everything off in an EV. Some systems still have power.”
That unpredictability is what concerns towing operators most. “You may see smoke,” Cantu said, “but you don’t see an explosion coming. That’s what can kill someone.”
Two years earlier at Ricky's storage facility, a fire involving a box truck caused approximately $200,000 in losses when flames spread to two adjacent semis. “That changed how we think about storage safety,” he said.
Issues with Containment
While the Firebox successfully contained the Tesla fire, disposal proved costly and complex. The vehicle remained submerged for two weeks before crews could begin removing contaminated water. Disposal required testing, documentation, specialized hauling, and placement at a Level 2 landfill approved for lithium contamination.
“You can’t just dump it,” Cantu said. “This isn’t oilfield water. Lithium contamination has its own rules.”
Testing alone exceeded $1,000, with hauling and landfill fees adding thousands more. Total out-of-pocket costs reached approximately $4,000, excluding storage time, labor, and equipment use. Insurance offered little relief.
“They paid for the other vehicles,” Cantu said. “But not the Tesla. That’s going to litigation.”
To work within state limits on storage fees, Ricky’s Towing now leases the Firebox through its environmental services division—one way operators are adapting to regulations that have yet to catch up with EV realities.
Training Program in the Works
Video from the incident showed firefighters climbing onto the Firebox while the vehicle burned, an action Cantu says highlights a widespread training gap. “That could’ve ended badly,” he said. “That thing could’ve exploded.”
In response, the company has scheduled a two-day EV safety course covering battery fires, containment systems, and contamination risks, inviting local and volunteer fire departments to attend. Ricky’s Towing has also invested in high-temperature fire blankets, providing one to a local department for training and evaluation.
“They don’t even have these yet,” Cantu said. “We want them to use it, film it, and tell us what happens. We’re all learning.”
Preparing for What’s Next
As electric vehicles—and electric semis—become more common on major freight corridors, containment challenges will only grow. “Some electric semis won’t even fit in a Firebox,” Cantu said. “That’s the next problem.”
Despite the cost, he believes incident-management towers should seriously consider containment systems. “This isn’t about equipment,” he said. “It’s about protecting people. I walk that yard every day. I don’t want one of my guys walking past a vehicle when it decides to blow.”
In this case, preparation made the difference. “We bought the Firebox just weeks before this happened,” Cantu said. “And it did exactly what it was supposed to do.”
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By George L. Nitti
On a wind-scoured ridge above a Montana ski area, a bright red snowcat belonging to the National Weather Service sat half-buried in stiff, wind-packed snow. It had broken down months earlier near a remote weather station and become entombed under six to seven feet of drifted white snow. Now, the agency needed it back.
They called Iron Horse Towing, one of the few operators in the region with the machines and experience to attempt a high-angle snowcat recovery.
Scott Wolff brought two LMC 1800 snowcats, each outfitted with large gateway blades and custom modifications for deep-snow operations. Reaching the stranded machine meant carving a quarter-mile corridor through crusted drifts thick enough to support a standing man.
“This kind of snow is nothing like clearing a driveway,” said Wolff. “It’s dense, it’s layered, and it fights you. In the pictures, you can see how deep the snow is and crusty and nasty. I mean it was drifted on that ridge probably six or seven feet deep, and anytime snow drifts like that, it gets to be really stiff.”
When the crew finally reached the buried weather-service cat, they discovered it was positioned on a slope with an unforgiving drop below. Wolff fabricated a specialized drawbar attachment so one of his snowcats could control the descent from the rear while the second pulled from the front. “I had to make a special drawbar attachment for it so we could hook my snowcat at the back of their snowcat and then the other snowcat in the front…so we could control it on the way down because these hills are insanely steep,” he said.
In the photos he shared, three machines are tethered in a train, inching down the mountain with the broken cat suspended between them like a pendulum on tracks. Behind them, on the far ridge line, the cluster of antennas they’d started from loomed against the sky—proof of just how far up the mountain the recovery had begun.
“One of my biggest fears is a breakdown of my own or getting stuck…It takes a very special skilled operator to operate these things in these areas,” Wolff said. The descent was slow, deliberate, and nerve-racking. A wrong throttle input could slide the entire recovery chain downhill. After hours of controlled movement, the team reached a lower landing where normal travel became possible.
The whole job stretched nearly twelve hours.
Snowcat recoveries pay well, Wolff admitted, but not every stranded driver can afford them. “These machines cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the terrain is dangerous. Some folks try to bargain it down, but I can’t run a cat twenty miles into the backcountry for whatever cash they have in their pocket.”
Still, he loves the work. “These are once-in-a-career jobs for most people. For us, it’s every season.”
By Randall C. Resch
