Published: Thursday, November 30, 2023
By George L. Nitti
Just before Thanksgiving holiday, Mountain Recovery was called to help with recovering a modular home that had gone over a cliffside in Breckenridge, Colorado. The company had come out earlier in the evening to assist two tractor trailers struggling to carry modular homes up a steep road.
Owner Charlie Stubblefield said, “For some reason, the homeowner/builder had a burning desire to get these homes to the building site after the sun had set. It wasn’t a good idea, especially on icy, steep roadways with switchbacks. The modular homes are 16 wide, 14 feet tall and 60 feet long.”
The first tractor made it to the top, with their help, but the second, upon the driver’s insistence to go it alone, did not fare so well.
“It missed a gear, slid back and the home slid off the edge and there it rested,” said Stubblefield.
The following morning, Stubblefield and his team returned, contemplating recovery options, briefly considering a crane.
“A 120-ton crane around switchbacks was a scary proposition. I didn’t think the road would support the outriggers,” said Stubblefield, “I realized a crane wasn’t going to work, and so we hatched a plan to use our 1150 Rotators.”
Bringing out their rotators on a pair of 2023 Kenworths, the team set up in a position that would best facilitate the recovery. The crew then worked fastidiously to secure their rigging to the casualty from both rotators, using multiple winch lines.
“I knew the modular home would want to work itself off the trailer that it was resting on,” said Stubblefield. “So we used 36 foot recovery flat straps a foot wide to secure the home better.”
He continued, “We went from underneath on the trailer frame and wrapped around the I-beam with chains. Around the mobile home around the bottom and top side, we basketed the unit, forcing it together so it wouldn’t separate.”
The process was slow-going and time-consuming, a recovery totaling nine hours.
Stubblefield said, “We were at 11,000 feet elevation. So you have 35% less oxygen, which makes it hard to move around. You are on an incline with 8% grade. Walking up the road is very tiring. On top of that you are on snow and ice. And the mobile home that we rigged is 40 feet down this embankment, which is on a 45-degree angle, if not better.”
Stubblefield estimated that the straps that they needed to carry down to secure the modular home weighed 150 pounds.
“We were trying to lodge the straps over the mobile home and wrap it around the trailer frame with chains that weighed another 150 pounds.”
The temperature was 18 degrees. Thank goodness for sheepskin, as Stubblefield was bundled in Atlas gloves and big muff boots as he noted there was a foot of snow on the hillside.
He said, “I like sheep wool lined rubber gauntlet gloves. It has insulation and is completely one-piece rubber that keeps you dry.”
Cell phone coverage was poor, making communication harder.
From the onset of the job, there was a big question mark whether they would be able to recover the home without splitting it into pieces. Stubblefield was up front with the customer, saying “All bets are off.” He wasn’t making any guarantees that he was going to be able to get it up in one piece.
“We are going to get the road open. We might have to get a bunch of dumpsters out here or have a big old bonfire.”
From the time they started winching, it took an hour and a half to get the home back up to the road. And luckily, or skillfully, it came back up in one piece.
“We were constantly accessing and rearranging our rigging. What are our straps digging into. Where else do we need a flat strap. Had to put another rigging point on that,” said Stubblefield.
When it was up on the road, they disconnected the tractor and moved the home up to a safe location, 250 yards up the road, where they parked it for the night.
The next day, Thanksgiving morning, they hooked their 25 ton wrecker up to the trailer bed after cutting the trailer and modifying it.
“The we hooked our wheel lift to it and took it all the way up the hill to the job site and placed it in the staging area.”
Published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Sometimes your GPS can get you into big trouble. Case in point, a lady driver discovered that when her GPS told her to take a right in her 2019 Chevy Silverado, it led her to veer off a rampway and break through a small fence. She ended up landing into a pond about the size of a football field, just outside an Auto Owner’s Insurance Company.
Fortunately, she had insurance on her totaled vehicle and swam away unscathed.
The dispatch came in early morning to P.J.s Towing of Lansing, Michigan. They were called by the Sheriff’s County Office to meet up with a two-man dive team and initiate a water recovery. Led by 20-year veteran heavy duty tow operator Jeff West, P.J.’s brought their 2022 Kenworth W900 with a Century 1150.
“Jeff met the dive team there. They came up with a plan on how they were going to get it out. Jeff instructed the divers to hook an endless loop around the rear wheels, shackle them, and join them together with a unity ring, wherein a winchline was sent from the rotator,” said owner P.J.
He continued, “From there, we were able to winch the truck from 12 ft. under water all the way back up to land. Then we picked it up with the rotator and set it down on one of our rollbacks and transported it back to the shop.”
According to P.J. it was a smooth recovery, in large part thanks to the operating ease of the rotator, which made light work of what might be classified as a medium duty tow, taking into account the water resistance and weight of the Silverado.
P.J. said, “The rotator is great. It’s versatile, you have 35 feet or so of reach and 50 thousand pound winches. With smaller trucks, the boom goes out one stage, so you may only have an extra 8 feet and the winch lines are not nearly as heavy-duty.”
Although a fairly standard recovery, PJ advised, “Figure out the safest way to recover the vehicle without doing further damage to it and work with your police department.”
Published: Saturday, November 04, 2023
By George L. Nitti
In Louisiana, on an I-55 bridge crossing just outside of New Orleans, the morning of October 23 is a day that will be remembered, unfortunately, for a tragic 168 vehicle pile-up resulting in a multitude of injuries, eight deaths and massive destruction.
The catastrophic event was caused by a “superfog,” a combination of a blinding fog passing over the area and smoke from outlying wildfires. For Louisiana towing companies such as Campeaux’s Towing, and Jake’s Towing, two of the key players on scene, what they saw and what they did will stand out as unprecedented.
Both companies reported working around the clock, approximately 27 hours from start to finish, to aid and rescue in the emergency response that included locating bodies, recovering vehicles, and cleaning up the roadway.
Aaron Campeaux, owner of Aaron Campeaux Towing, which brought 3 flatbeds to scene, indicated that that they were instructed to bring everything they had at around 9 a.m. in the morning.
“You just couldn’t believe it,” said Campeaux. “Driving on the side of the bridge, you see a tanker truck blazing, you see a car that fell off a bridge. This is something that you’ve never seen before.”
What Campeaux found on the bridge was beyond anything he could imagine.
“It looked like a wreckage from 9/11. There was so much stuff mangled and people were on stretchers, and you witnessed people who were dead,” he said. “You never can get used to it. It was heartbreaking.”
Campeaux noted that their flatbeds loaded one or two vehicles at a time while several low boys were used to stack 7 or 8 a piece. Many of the vehicles recovered were engulfed in flames and burnt to a crisp.
He said, “Cars were so hot and burnt, that things were stuck to the concrete and to other cars. We needed to pry them off with our heavier duty bed.”
Since the recovery, Campeaux added that he's been working long days into the evening to tackle the immense task of paperwork and making sure each car was accounted for.
Also on scene was Jake’s Towing, which focused on doing the heavier duty recoveries with two of their rotators. They also brought forklifts, bobcats and dumpsters.
Recovery supervisor Clint Jacob said, “We were brought in to clean up the bigger messes like tractor trailers.”
Jacob’s said that Jake's did four major recoveries in a row, one that included cleaning up the charred remains of french fries from a burnt-up Burger King tractor-trailer and another involving a load of sheet rock that needed to be separated and loaded onto a tractor trailer and dump truck.
He said, “Sheetrock doesn’t burn. It’s chalk. The trailer melted.”
He also recalled the difficulty of working the scene. “Cars were everywhere. We had to take a rotator and lift cars up in order to get to other trucks,” he said.
At the end of the day, Jacobs noted that the company didn’t expect to get paid on the huge bill that they processed from all their work.
“We serve our community,” he said. “We don’t just want to be the bad guy known for taking your car from an unauthorized parking space. We take care of customers. It’s about giving back to the community. That’s the image we want to show.”
