Chained in Tulsa

After delivering to Lowe's Distribution Ctr in Rockford, IL they gave me a load out of the Center going to a Lowe's store in Tulsa, OK. They had a pretty big snow storm in Tulsa and I had dry roads after getting out of Illinois. When I got within 40 miles of Tulsa it got nasty. It was mostly wet, but the closer I got to Tulsa the more ice was on the roads.

I knew with the snowfall they got that the store I was going to was going to have snow in the parking lot. It was worse than I thought. I turned in behind the store and it was an upward slope going up to the docks behind the store. It had a foot of snow on it and I only made it half way up the hill. Lost all traction because it had a coating of ice under the wet snow. I was stuck. For the first time in 33 years I had to put chains on the truck and it was just to get into a parking lot. It took me a while to do it to. Tried to just chain two outside drive tires, nope. Had to go back and chain the other 2 outside drive tires too. So I had all four outside tires chained on the tractor after a hour and 15 minutes. I had to lay the chains over the tires and roll back down the hill to get them wrapped over the tire so I could latch the chains. By the time I finally got the chains on the tires the rear of the trailer was on the edge of the street.

I got traction and got up the hill. We had an empty trailer in the dock, and it was a dock that sloped downhill to the dock doors. I had to drop my loaded trailer and pull the empty out, drop it and hook back up to the loaded trailer and put it in dock, then hook back up to the empty and I would be ready to go. Nope!!

It took me 4 hours. Dropped the loaded, but when backed under the empty I hooked up air lines and the emergency line had a hole in it. Couldn't release the trailer brakes, tried to pull back out and up the hill but even with the chains the tires just spun on the ice. The tires would dig a hole to the concrete and couldn't get over the ice on the back and front of the tires. Ended up going into Lowe's and buying a shovel and dig a trench up the hill out of the dock. Went and fixed the air line at a truck stop 9 miles away. Came back and got the loaded trailer out without putting the chains back on. Went to put the loaded trailer in the dock and got stuck on the ice when I pulled up to get lined up with the dock. Dug some more, this time was chipping through solid ice. The sun was out and had glazed it over and was hard enough to stand on it much less drive on it. Finally I got it in there and back under the empty trailer.

I then went to Muskogee, OK to pick up a load going to Mesquite, TX near Dallas. From there I got to go on home getting there on Monday morning where I spent the first 2 days trying to thaw out. Finished painting the living room.

Left out on Sunday morning and am now in Baton Rouge, LA where I will deliver a load at 3am in the morning, so off to bed.