B and I rode together last night. A few hours into the shift we were dispatched to a traffic hazard on the freeway. An 18 wheeler was stalled in a moving lane of traffic. We arrived and found the vehicle stopped on the outside shoulder of the freeway. We walked up to the tractor and found this:
That is a leaking fuel tank. The tractor has two tanks and they were both leaking diesel onto the shoulder of the freeway. The passenger side window of the cab was open. We each shined our lights into the cab and yelled for the driver. We did not get a response. So, we had a leaking tractor with who knows what in the trailer and no driver. We did not know how volatile the leaking diesel fuel was, so we walked about thirty yards away and called for the fire department and a heavy duty wrecker to make our scene. While we were waiting, we started thinking about the worst case scenarios. The truck blowing up would be one, but what if the trailer was full of illegal immigrants? Or explosives? Or fertilizer? Why did the driver leave? Why were there no markings on the trailer?
As we started to walk back toward the tractor to more thoroughly check it out, the fire department arrived. I walked to the tractor, and sure enough, the driver and a passenger were asleep in the sleeper portion of the cab. I guess they did not hear us before. This time they woke up and exited the cab. The fire department personnel did not seem very concerned about the volatility of the diesel fuel, so we relaxed a little bit.
The tractor driver said that as he was making a u-turn, the tractor bottomed out on a large dip and the fuel tanks hit the concrete and were damaged. He said that he was transporting 10,000 pounds of frozen fish and the "reefer" was not running. The reefer is the unit that refrigerates the trailer. He went on to say that he is the owner operator of this tractor. He paid 19,000 grand for it in 2008. It was built in 2004 and had been driven 450,000 miles. In less than three years he has put another 350,000 miles on the tractor. Wow. That is a lot of driving! This was the first time for it to be towed for any reason.
A few minutes later, the heavy duty wrecker arrived. The owner of the heavy duty wrecker also came by in his regular size wrecker truck. I chatted him up about the heavy duty wrecker. It was built in 2004 and he bought it in 2009 for over 200 large. It had about 125,000 miles on it at that time. It gets about 5 miles to the gallon and takes 13 gallon of oil each oil change. He charges $212 an hour with a two hour minimum for each tow. Big numbers for a big truck. The heaviest tractor trailer combination that he has towed weighed 140,000 pounds. The tractor trailer combination tonight weighed about 40,000 pounds.
The heavy duty driver used a chain and hooked it to a hook located in the small hole in the front bumper of the tractor. He then lifted the tractor about 6 inches. Just enough to slide the huge steel boom underneath the tractor. The boom had forks on it which hooked onto the front axel of the tractor. The tractor was then lifted to the height seen below for towing.
But the heavy duty driver was not done. He used an air compressor to charge the air tanks of the tractor for braking. He then had to remove the tractor's rear axle. This is done to prevent damage to the tractor's transmission during towing. He removed a hub cap and eight bolts. Then another cap came off and some fluid came out. The axle then slid out. A plate was placed over the opening and the bolts were replaced. The long black pole in the picture below is the axle.
The fire department used some type of compound to temporarily seal the leak in the fuel tank. With the help of the heavy duty driver, the tractor driver was able to get the reefer started so that the fish would be kept cold. There is no telling how long the trailer had been without refrigeration. It makes you wonder about the food that you buy.
We were on the scene for a little over an hour. Not long at all for a heavy duty tow scene. Each night is something a little different.
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