Gettin' Stuck with the Truck

A recent larger than usual snowfall in the eastern US led to an unexpected change of plans last weekend at the ranch. It had snowed, frozen, and, then, started raining when we left for the ranch hauling three 6’ x 8’ steel gates, two extended t-post pounders, and a stump puller I had fabricated at home. We arrived without issue, unloaded the equipment and began working on our projects. Jess’s plan was work on dam repair, which she did quite well. I’ll go into this process in another post. My plan was to work on pulling stumps and dragging the logs and branches out of the way. Pulling stumps moved more slowly than I would have hoped for because it was raining and I was new to it.  Although I had taken photographs of the stump puller in action, I accidentally deleted them before writing this post, so I will have to take more photographs later.  

 The aftermath of our ordeal about a day later. 

By noon, the rain had stopped falling and the sun came out.  The ground began softening in many areas so we decided to leave the truck parked and work on other tasks for the rest of the afternoon.  However, at some point in the afternoon Jess chanced using the truck to drive across a muddy field.  The truck sunk down to its axils and, even though it was 4-wheel drive, would not budge. 

We tried just about everything to get the truck out of the ground: digging, laying branches under the tires, using the jack, pulling with a underpowered hand winch, swearing, etc.  By the time it was getting dark, we had pretty much run out of options and tried calling a tow truck.  Unfortunately, we had not realized that how remote our ranch really is.  The only person who would even consider coming out was a self-employed guy who told us to call him back at 9:00AM the next day and he would "take a look at it."  As the temperature began to drop, we then tried to find a taxi service, but no one was willing to drive that far.  At that point we realized that we would have to spend the night there, so we dressed up as much as we could and huddled together in the cab.  Initially, we would stay warm by periodically running the truck and using the truck's heater.  However, at about midnight, I exited the truck to see if the mud was freezing, I found that the heat generated from running the truck periodically was preventing the ground under the truck from freezing solid.  In our minds, the best chance we had for getting out of that field was to wait for the mud to freeze solid and then drive the truck out of the frozen ruts.  However, by running the truck periodically, we were ruining that chance.  For this reason we spent the rest of the night with no heat.

Just before the sun rose, I left the truck and checked the ground.  Everything except the mud under the truck had frozen solid.  At nine we called the tow truck driver and he finally showed up in his giant two wheel drive wrecker at around 10 AM. He got out of his truck, looked at our truck, and told us the soil was way too soft for him to do anything.  Jess started crying and he then said that he might know someone else who could help us.  Long story short, the other guy was able to help us and about three hours later the truck was unstuck.  Jess has lost her driving privileges on the property. 

Trains crossing a bridge near Richmond, Virginia.