A Rude Awakening on the Way to Lunch This Afternoon

Reminds me of when I was 18 and spent the summer of 81, working as carney (Coincidentally in Wisconsin). We were moving the show, traveling in a convoy on a 2 lane highway. I was riding shotgun in an ancient (Maybe early Fifties?) Mack tractor, no seat, sitting on a bucket of hydraulic oil. We were pulling an 80K pound "Skydiver" ride and cursing about a hundred yards behind a food concession trailer. Suddenly the trailer broke free from the tow vehicle and started tumbling as we rapidly approached it, oncoming traffic in the other lane and a steep drainage ditch on the right. I remember thinking "This is it" but fortunately the trailer veered off into the ditch about 10 yards before we would have hit it.

The tongue of the trailer had been "Carny rigged" welded up out of scrap and just snapped off...
 
These kinds of “wasn’t my time” moments seem more random than just involving ag equipment or inspections. Mine were always seemingly happening in slo-mo and there was literally nothing I could do except observe and clean my shorts later. A regular car or truck tire can easily kill or maim but the thought of a tractor tire on the loose….WOW. That’s whole other level of pucker. Glad nobody got hurt.
 
In this case there was no fear, no panic, no pucker moment, and no need for a change of shorts. For some reason everything was calm and collected. Just figuring out the next steps to avoid getting run over by the tire.

Once we could see the tire was turning out to the field we just continued on our way as though nothing happened
 
I must be livin' right. I've never had such an experience. I've been 'stuck' behind farm equipment many times, but I just settle in and wait for a (safe) opportunity to pass. The person in the combine or plow or whatever is doing everything they can - but they can't go 65... Most will take every opportunity to move to the shoulder (without stopping - they'd never get there if they did) to give you an opportunity to pass. Don't be a jerk, just wait. The overall impact to your drive is probably no more than a few minutes (most combines aren't driving across the country for site-seeing purposes).

Since moving to AZ I don't have this experience anymore - now it's construction equipment...

GsT
 
I'm relieved to hear that neither you nor the equipment operator were injured!

When I was younger, I was a police officer in a large city. Sadly, we attended to many scenes with injuries and fatalities when tires, wheels or treads from tires came off of vehicles. Even small car tires can impose much damage & injuries. Again, I'm relieved that there were no injuries from your incident.

Not so many years ago, I had a tire/wheel come off if my wife's car. All 5 lug nut studs sheared off on the way home from having new tires installed. (So much for using torque wrenches)

I was traveling about 25 MPH and, even at the speed, the wheel left with enough momentum to fly in air about 20 feet and through someone's steel garage door. Amazingly powerful these heavy things can be. (And thankfully my wife was not driving and no pedestrians were between the tire & its final resting place inside the peoples' garage.)

Paul
 
Meeting ag equipment on the road is an almost every day occurrence in this area. As a Kid I was usually the one on the tractor hauling multiple garin or hay wagons. It's something you get used to and never think twice about it.

I must admit the largest piece I encountered was on a county road by West Liberty Iowa. Again, it was an articulated JD pulling a chisel plow. The tractor had 3 wheels wide on each axle, and the plow was on both shoulders even though it was folded up. We happened to meet where a hill was cut down so there was no way for either of us to move to one side.

I ended up backing up about half a mile into a farmyard. As luck would have it that was also the tractors destination. We both got out, talked a few minutes, and went on our way. He still had a few hundred acres to plow, and I had to get to the Louis Rich plant to install some packaging machinery.
 
This is a single horsepower story. One day I was on my way from Walla Walla to Milton-Freewater. Just a mile south of the state line. There was a horse that got out its corral and got in the middle of a four-lane highway. All cars in both directions stopped, no one blew a horn. We all waited for the cowboy to come and to put a halter on the horse and lead it back home. After the pair were completely off the road, did us drivers continued on our way. That my friends, is what makes a good day in this world.
 
Its threads like this that let me know my experience is not the norm. There is no pattern as I’ve seen it on hiways, rural roads, city streets.

I’m walking home from hi school like a million times before and out of a side street on to the busy road I’m walking this tire and wheel comes whizzing across the street perfectly missing the traffic and crashes into the fence on the side of the road. As I’m thinking WTH! I hear this crunching sliding noise and my mom’s honking Torino wagon comes screeching to a halt at the stop sign with right rear dragging on the ground. Turns out there was a recall for flaws in the rear axels as the axel broke right at the hub. Thankfully she wasn’t out on the highway!

I was commuting to be in a band as so often was. I was just south of Ceres on hwy99( my grandma called it blood alley) and it‘s 5pm with traffic doing 70mph and it went from 3 lanes to two so everyone smashed down to bumper to bumper still doing 70. At that time 99 was divided by oleander bushes so you had no idea what was going on with the south bound lanes. All the sudden there’s this huge cloud of dust and the oleanders shake. Out of this cloud a PU truck tire shoots out and lands between the two cars in the fast lane kinda in front of me. It bounces and flashes across my hood about a foot away from my windshield(I’m in a little Datsun PU) and is gone out into a field. None of us had time to react thankfully because if anyone had hit their brakes or swerved it would have been a huge pileup. I had to quit the band as it got to be one crazy crash after another or some nutbar almost every time I went to Modesto.

Part of dealing with the Central Valley was tule fog. It would get so thick you couldn’t even see headlights 10’ in front of you much less the cars. I was on a back road going through orange orchards that go on forever. It’s 5am and still dark and I’m poking along using the centerline reflectors and the road edge stripe to navigate. Out of the fog comes headlights and it’s a big PU towing a huge picking ladder trailer with porta pottie. The guy has ladders strapped to the top of the truck but either he didn’t strap the front or it broke loose because as I see the rig a ladder is pointing right at me across in my lane and as I sit there frozen it lifts up just misses the windshield and swings back over to the other side going in like a figure 8 back and forth as he flies down the road. I literally had nowhere to go and it happened so fast then all was dark again like it didn’t even happen.
 
IHinIN said:
I grew up on a farm and still farm 18 acres and help my brother who farms 700 acres full time. If you think sharing the road with farm equipment is bad, imagine what it’s like being the guy driving the equipment and having to deal with some of the idiots on the road. I’ve had people stop in the middle of the road instead of pulling over when there’s nowhere for me to go. Trust me Karen, your Prius doesn’t intimidate me in the 16ft wide CaseIH combine I’m driving. Lol
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We have some conservation management farmland around us with one farmstead being the primary interest. They have all of the equipment and probably 100 acres on that farm and many smaller 20-30 acre parcels they farm.

Many times a year there will be a tractor with many implements in tow going down my street and you wouldn't believe the things I've seen idiots do.

Block the road and call police? Yep
Drive through someone's lawn and get stuck? Yup.
Curse the poor guy out? Uh huh.

I saw a lady in a newer Mercedes drive right into a ditch. She explained the tractor should have pulled over and let her go by, she had to save the day by driving into the ditch and shouldn't have to pay for the recovery.

She was ticketed and had to pay to regrade the neighbors swale from the damage done.
 
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