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Originally Posted by fencer
Good for you.... still can't leave my job(going to be at it till 95...thats when I reach my magic number  )....next time you pass through Edmonton lunch is on me |
Awesome! Thanks!
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Great stories Mike!!! Thanks for posting! No hijack at all.
I have had my fair share of meetings with oncoming trucks too! I don't swerve for pickups at all...I could kill myself and even dump the load and kill the oncoming pickup too so that's a bad option. I pick the spot on the road where I am safe to travel as far over as I can get, and it's up to the pickup to get out of the way. Sometimes the pickups are traveling too fast to get out of the way, and sometimes the logging trucks are traveling too fast as well (depending too much on the radios) and accidents do happen. I have seen A LOT of collisions in the last year and a half. It is surprising the damage that can be done, and people walking away. Highway 63 is a flipping dangerous road!
VHF radios aren't perfect, and they are affected by some other receptions and transmissions like GPS monitoring. Good VHF radios work much better than cheap ones, some get less than 1 km of good reception/transmission. VHF radios definitely help a lot and are worth their weight in gold, but some people rely too heavily on them.
The REALLY scary thing is the suicidal drivers out there that purposely drive into big rigs and the drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We had four of these type of incidents while I was driving in the area and two of the passenger vehicle drivers died. We didn't have any log drivers get overly injured in any collisions. The number one reason truck drivers go in the ditch is because they fall asleep or job complacency.
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A friend of mine was driving up the 63 hwy empty just south of Ft McMurray at about 4:30am. He comes around a bend and sees something on the road. Turns out there is a car parked in his lane with its lights off.
As he comes around the corner his lights wake up the passed out drunken driver who starts his car and tries to get back into the proper lane. The logging truck hits the car going approximately 90 km/h. The logging truck goes up over the hood, jack knifes, and goes into the opposite ditch backwards. The car is thrown about 60 ft backwards. It took investigators 4 hours to find the engine of the car - it was
under the logging truck's engine. Both vehicles were a write-off. The driver of the logging truck walked away, and the driver of the car had to be cut out with the jaws of life. Believe it or not, the driver of the car only suffered
a broken arm! If the logging truck had a moose bumper on it, I don't think the driver of the car would have been so lucky.
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This driver approached a blind bridge going well over 80 km/hr (speed limit is 80 on dirt rds) with a GVW of 68,000kg. There was an oncoming fuel tanker truck that was already on the bridge. The drivers called the bridge on the radio at the same time ("walked on each other") and were unable to hear each other. To avoid collision, the logging truck driver took the ditch, which in this case was a swampy stream. The weather was -38C. The logging truck driver walked away amazingly but suffered severe frostbite on his legs from getting wet, and nearly faced amputation. Why he was approaching the bridge at that speed and at that weight is beyond me!
If you look closely at the top right of the first picture you can see the drivers' side stack and the hood of the logging truck in a horizontal position. The truck jack-knifed, and then rolled which ripped the bunk off the first trailer. The second photo is after clean up and shows the first bunk of the trailer still attached to the truck.
