Ridin’ The Storm Out – Part 2 – 2024hrs

My first VERY close call… was traveling along on I71 in Kentucky today… you know where they had the really, REALLY bad ice storm?  The one that’s dumping all the snow shit on your guys?

So I’m traveling along in the slow lane… doing about 50 because the lane is fairly clear.  I have a truck coming up on me fairly quick… know he’s gonna go out around me… when I see some clown in a grey Jeep Cherokee coming up the get-on ramp, we’re matching speed when he looks over at me and I look at him.

So what does the rocket surgerist do?
Yup… he punches it to get on the highway ahead of me!!
He’s got a good long ramp and he gets ahead of me… except the moron didn’t think about the foot high pile of snow at the end of the ramp from the highway where the plow guys had just pushed it aside.
He hits that… goes slide ways… and does a donut RIGHT in front of me
Comes to a stop passenger’s side to me… blocking both lanes
I have JUST enough time to hit the four ways to let the guy behind me know… and swerve to the hammer lane
Just as I’m about to hit this asshole, he gets enough of his senses to punch the gas and I can hear the cherokee smoking the tires as he’s heading back up the get-on ramp, out of my way JUST in the nick of time for my trailer to go through the space his vehicle occupied a split second before
I saw him turn aournd and get back on the highway… but he never got above about 40 when I left him in my dust
All because he didn’t want to get stuck behind a big truck
If I had hit him… I probably would have killed him… certainly seriously injured him
I sooo wanted to stop and ask him what the fuck he was thinking

I didn’t dare hit the brakes… I had already started to wander towards the hammer lane and my truck tires were in shit… knew if I hit them I’d start skidding
so… hit the four ways, turn wheel and hope like hell
I will give him credit that he stomped on that V8 and gave it all it had to get out of the way in time
It must have been pretty scary to him to0… I mean I had literally less than a car length away when he mashed the gas, all he could have seen was this GINORMOUS Frieghtliner grill bearing down on him in a hurry!
Of course by that time I was already having to swerve back to the right so I didn’t go into the median and with the trailer tracking slower (called off-tracking – the difference between where your rig tires go and where the trailer follows)… it would have run him right over!!

I say again people… especially in bad weather… if a big rig doesn’t move over to let you on… SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!  Wait YOUR turn to get on the highway, don’t “force” your way in, or try to “slide” in ahead of (or RIGHT behind) a big truck!  Fully loaded we’re carrying upwards of 20 TONS.. it is literally like a freight train hitting your puny little car… even if you drive an SUV… I WILL crush, maim and probably kill you just TRYING to slow down, never mind actually stopping.

Okay… lecture over… for now.

Sitting in the rest area just East of Columbus, OH for the night.. roads are getting too shitty and I’m tired… I still have 744 miles to go before Friday at 0800 when this load delivers so tomorrow’s gonna be a long day!

PS… Shout-out to my sweetie for letting me use part of our IM chat tonight so I didn’t have to retype all this!  🙂