Crazy Truck Stories

[pritch]

Many years ago, I think around summer of '86 maybe, I was out of work so I agreed to do some foundations for a couple of friends who were building log cabins up in the mountians outside of Heber, Utah. They had this old like early 50 something two ton Chevy. That old truck was actually in real good shape for it's age, and we used it to haul a stack of rented Symons forms up the hill. It took several trips, and on one of the return trips, they wanted to haul this great big log back down to the yard. So we threw it on and chained it down.

Now, one of the few little things wrong with the truck was a leaky brake line. They had meant to fix it, but hadn't yet. They had a gallon jug of brake fluid and kept the master cyl. filled up, and the hand brake worked real good, so it was all good, and we topped off the master and headed down the hill. We made the several miles of dirt road just fine, made the stop at the highway OK and headed for town. From this point, Heber is about 7 or 8 miles down a fairly straight highway so we came up to speed. About 2 miles out, we get into the slower speed limits and Bill, the driver, steps on the brakes and of course, they go clear to the floor!

We don't panic right off. Bill starts downshifting. Since this truck has a 2 speed rear end, he is slowing us down just fine and easy until he blows a shift and the rear end jams between gears. We still don't panic, but our unease is definatly growing. Bill says "Well, this is why they call it the 'emergency brake''' and laughs and gives the handle a pull. It does absolutly nothing. We then realize that the E-brake is the type that is basicly a brake drum at the rear of the transmission, and our problem is that we are in nuetral at the rear end!

Now, we panic. We are about a mile and a half from Main Street, which is also US 40, and a very busy road. The road we are on has just enough of a slope that we are maintaining about 40 MPH or so, so we have a good 2 or 3 minutes to discuss how bad the wreck is gonna be when we get to Main Street. We're trying to decide if we should put it into a tree, or into a ditch, or slough off some speed against the cars lining the road, when all at once we're at Main and out of time and Bill shouts "Hang on-this is gonna be ugly" and starts cranking on that big ol' steering wheel.

Now, I've driven down Main Street Heber City about a million times, and I've waited at every single cross street for what seemed like hours waiting to get across, and I know full well that if I live to be a thousand years old, there will never be a break in traffic like the one me and Bill got that day. There were no cars for several blocks either way. No little old ladies in the crosswalk, no kids on bikes, nothing! I'm not sure why the truck didn't roll when we made the turn, but it didn't, and when we made that turn, it started to do wheel hop some, and the slack end of the chain that was holding that log down slipped off the bed and went under the tire and that's what stopped us.

I never rode in that truck again.