[TheForge] Adventures in steel delivery.

[JAMES OESTREICH]

On 3/8/2013 9:18 AM, Andrew Vida wrote:
> So I spend all this time excavating the crawl space beneath the house 
> with nothing but a shovel and wheel barrow.  200 yards of impossible 
> WV red shale clay.  The 2' crawl space is not 10' deep and almost 
> ready for the new foundation wall.  I order about 1000' of rebar and a 
> few other bits for the work ahead.
>
> West Virginia Steel truck arrives yesterday and as it backs down our 
> steep driveway the brakes apparently have issues and the truck just 
> keeps rolling.  That length of 12" channel just kisses the house as 
> the truck comes to a tenuous stop.  I chocked the wheels and the 
> driver calls a wrecker.  An hour later the truck is halfway up the 
> driveway, chocked and safe.
>
> So what does the driver then do, you ask?  He proceeds to follow the 
> wrecker up the driveway against instruction, stalls the engine on the 
> GMC 7500 flatbed, which has no airbrakes, and proceeds rolling back to 
> the house.
>
> I am standing directly behind about 50' back thinking that this just 
> cannot be happening.  I dodged being hit by about 8 to 12 inches.  The 
> truck plows into the parked 4Runner, destroying the front end as the 
> driver attempts to avoid leveling the house, veers off to the right, 
> all this backwards, flies into the as-yet dry pond I excavated about 6 
> months ago, the back slamming into the opposite embankment and 
> decelerating the vehicle from about 35 or 40 mph to zero in well under 
> 1/10 of a second.  The front wheels flew at least 2' off the ground as 
> the entire chassis bent in ways never intended, the remaining energy 
> directing the cab rightward about 15 feet.
>
> I was certain the driver had been killed, but he survived, if with a 
> goodly showing of his own blood as his head went through the back 
> window.  That the steel was not driven through the cab and 
> subsequently through the driver seems convincing evidence that someone 
> was watching over him.
>
> A small fleet of wreckers showed up and in about 6 hours they actually 
> managed to themselves get stuck in the mud, but eventually got 
> themselves and the delivery vehicle out.
>
> So my driveway is damaged from the steel chocks scraping as the 
> wreckers skidded under the stress of the cables, one of which broke 
> unceremoniously - nobody killed by the whipping cable, but I was 
> standing only about 40 feet away, thereafter increasing my interval of 
> observation.
>
> Garden nuked, car nuked, potato bed nuked, tillable ground seriously 
> nuked.  House slightly damaged.
>
> All in all, the day seemed pretty to have passed well.  Nobody killed.
> ______________________________________________________________
> TheForge mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:TheForge at mailman.qth.net
>
> TheForge mail list group photo site is
> http://www.shutterfly.com
> Login: blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
> Password: anvil
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
Andy you have just to much fun   it sounds like you had the 3 stooge's 
there summer is coming and better days and good luck on the rest JTO.