Pulling car out of Ditch

Was at my computer near midnight Friday night when my wife yelled down that there was a car in the ditch out front. I think there may have been one or two beers too many or something. No problem, I just go out and offer to pull them out with my freshly rebuilt 200. It was close but using all the pulling power it could muster we pulled it out. Understand the 200 still doesn't have lights and the road was dark and somewhat busy. Do you believe that after we were done my wife had the gall to ask if I had been paid! My response was, "What do you mean, I paid them!" Sometimes life is just fun.

One or two beers too many would have been a good reason to leave the car in the ditch. Instead of pulling it out and sending those drunks on down the road to endanger other folks, you should have called the sheriff.

No good deed goes unpunished.
Oh well , you tried.
Bob S.

Yeah you are right. I may be slandering the guy though. My drive is hard to see in the dark and that is what he was trying to get to. He was not stumbling or anything like that. I know what a drunk looks like.

I'm not scolding you so don't take this the wrong way. here in Ontario it is illegal to pull someone out of the ditch if they have been drinking and there are several case studies on the issue..pulling someone out of the ditch who gets into a subsequent accident can come back to you and you can be liable. I'm only telling you this as a warning. I wouldn't pull anyone out. If the chain breaks and damages their car you are responsible for damages, if you hook the chain wrong and it damages their car, you are responsible..for your own sake you are better off to tell the person you don't have a running tractor and you will phone them a tow truck..who in turn will notify the police if alcohol is a factor..you sound like a good guy who is willing to help someone out but these things can come right back at you..I would not pull anyone out anymore..but I used to..I just say I haven't got a chain or my tractor has no battery

LMack: When alcohol or religion are involved, it's best to leave them in the ditch, and let the appropriate authority deal with them.

40 years ago I went for a truck load of concrete gravel, as I was leaving the pit area, on a left curve, a rusty old Buick missed his right curve, went across road in front of me and into ditch. I stopped to be sure no one was hurt. They offered me six bottles of Hermit wine to pull them back on the road. Hermit wine was a dollar a bottle wine we got in the 60s, used mainly by wineo's. Personally I thought was garbage. Anyway, I advised them I was doing them a favour by leaving them in the ditch.

Fast forward 20 years and we had a engineer and his wife move in on next farm. They decided to become part time farmers, and further decided to be a substancial influence in the church they belonged to. Within 10 days he phoned to have his tractor towed out of an open drainage ditch, of which I was upstream on. I towed him out, he didn't say so much as thank you, nor did he clear out the ditch blockage he created. Another week went by and he was exploring his newly acquired clear cut forest via tractor and got wedged between two stumps, in ground so soft man could hardly walk over it. My tractors were some distance away, thus I told him he could wait until my forestry skidder was home. When it got home 3 days later I pulled him out and again not even a thank you. Later I heard from a guy in his church that he laid a uncomlimentary blessing on me for making him wait. Still later on icy roads his good wife went in ditch near church, and some two miles from me. She called me for a tow. I advised her she best call the local tow truck service. Her responce, "he'll charge me." I said, "EXACTLY, but just think how much Tom Parker is going to charge me the next time I need him, and he finds out I've been out highway towing with my tractor."

Nope, two people I always leave in the ditch, drunks and bible thumpers.

Years ago "we" thought "we" were pretty tricky with nylon ropes. I was a member of a small local 4x4 club. One night on a VERY icy slick county road, two of us came across a big Chrysler in the ditch, a shallow, rolling thing that in good weather a 2x4 pickup could have driven right out of.

I didn't realize the old fart was drunk as a skunk.

Tied to the rear, told him to give it a little in reverse, and hang on. The procedure with a nylon rope involves momentum. I wound up the Chrysler 340 powered Landcruiser and off we went. Put the guy's face right into the steering wheel, gave him a bloody nose.

Then he WAS put out. That's when I discovered he was drunk. After a rather one-sided conversation, with him doing the, uh, "talking" I offered to call the sheriff. He declined the offer. For all I know, he could still be in that ditch.


One night a kid had wrecked his car "up the road" and walked in, woke up my Dad. He was not a good person to wake up. Kid asked "can you call a wrecker?"

Dad said "yep, go out and wait on the front porch." Closed the door, called the sheriff, and went back to bed.

Mike: You are quite correct, most farm tractor liability insurance does not cover you for doing highway towing. In alcohol situations the guy with the tow truck has the ability and the law behind him to keep the vehicle on the hook until police arrive, if he deems necessary.

If you notice my post below, I knew my tractor was not covered by insurance for the highway towing. Off highway is a bit different, also 30-40 years ago was a bit different. Recently I know of a bulldozer owner-operator being sued because the chain broke and went through grill and radiator of a new Western Star.

40 years ago I pulled a disabled highway tractor from under a trailer, before his air pressure dropped and maxi's came on. He wanted me to tow it to my yard, number one he had another highway tractor 5 min away to take the trailer, plus he wanted me to store his highway tractor until they could send a lowbed for it. This guy lived 120 miles away and trucked agri commodities. Would I do this today? I'd have to know him very well.

This is all about liability, lawyers and their clients having someone's insurance pay for their misfortune. Things have changed drastically in the past 40 years.

I have a farmer friend, towed a locked car blocking one of his farm access roads. The owner tried to sue him, said it damaged transmission. He had to prove another access road to same field was not suitable for a tractor trailer. Even though he successfully defended himself, it still cost him money. Proper proceedure here is have the local towing company tow the vehicle for illegal parking. Then you can claim for the time your equipment waited to gain access. In this case it was combine, tractor trailer, farm tractor and grain buggy. Lot of money during harvest.

(quoted from post at 19:52:06 04/18/09)
I have a farmer friend, towed a locked car blocking one of his farm access roads. The owner tried to sue him.

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Next time, just tow it into a hole in the ground.

Been pulled out plenty of times, pulled others out plenty of times. Things have changed in last 20 years. Time to let the tow truck drivers handle it. Too easy to pull a car apart getting it out of the ditch. My daughter had her 2004 malibu towed. The jerks hooked onto her sway bars and bent them. They should have known better. With about everything being plastic and nothing to hook onto, to easy to break something. I'd probably still hook on to a pickup if it had tow hooks and wasn't buried.

BC: Your post reminds me of a time a mineral exploration company was drilling near me. They spotted my 1066 and came looking for a tow. They tried to cross a bog loaded with drill shaft, one of the 4x4 F-250s high off the ground, 70s vintage. He was burried right to the bumpers. I went down and could see I would be pulling from dry solid ground. I suggested we go and get my forestry skidder some 10 miles away as the logging arch would lift as well as pull. He didn't want to spend the extra money. I said, "What happens if I pull the truck, and leave suspencion and axles behind." Young lad, suggested the old man would be a wee bit poorer. His dad owned the company.

Anyhow I towed the pickup, axles came with it. That was 30 years ago. I wouldn't touch that situation today.

The, uh, "proper" way to yank a vehicle out of a snowbank

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kMHDfsKHII

Hugh: your post reminds me of the time a guy got his 4x4 truck stuck in front of my brother's ranch in New Mexico. The guy was towing a tandem axle horse trailer with horses when he short-cut the road. The ground there is clay with sand blown over it, so it looks like dry sand. No problem, the guy's buddy had a front end loader down the road a ways. He got it, came back and hooked to the front axle of the truck. He yarded the axle right out from under the truck and yanked the hitch off of the back of the truck.

Another time, one of my friends was logging with a D9 Cat. A trucker hauling a large power transformer on a low-boy trailer, got stuck just down the road. The trucker asked my friend to pull him out. My friend drove the D9 down there with a large chunk of logging chain and looked over the situation. He advised the trucker to unhook the low-boy so my friend could pull out the truck first. Then he would pull out the trailer. The trucker told my friend that it was a brand new truck and that he wasn't going to hurt it by pulling it out with the trailer. So my friend hooked the chain to the frame rails and pulled the frame rails off of the drivers and out from under the fifth-wheel.

Chris: Crawlers especially big ones should only tow heavy equipment. Young lad I had spreading manure, got 1066 down with duals just as frost was coming out. He wasn't down that bad, but he was on frozen soil. With water saturation in the soil above the frozen soil, may as well have been pure ice. 12 ton flotation manure spreader behind.

Since he was alone, forestry skidder was not near, he took the Cat D7 and two new 3/8" chains. He broke both chains, and what I had left was 4 push poles. The annoying part, he drove the D7 right past a 1" cable with tow hooks. I think he got so excited about getting a crack at driving the D7, all else was forgotten.

Hardest pull I ever made in my life was D7 down in a peat bog over it's tracks. We got a cable attached to it's drawbar. 200' away was a 6' embankment. I put the Deere down over that bank, with rear against bank. We put a 4' diameter yellow brich under the cable about 25' from the D7. That was designed to lift. Then we backed 1066 in front of Deere, drawbar over the logging blade, chained the two together. The front end will come up on those big skidders if pulling hard enough on winch, and back wheels can't slide.

I wouldn't let anyone else make this pull. I set the throttle about 1,200 rpm, started winching. It was damn uncomfortable listening to that cable wrap on the winch spool right behind me. Pulled the 7 out, 1" cable didn't break, however it wasn't worth a damn after that pull, almost like a long 1x4 board to handle, wouldn't wrap on winch spool unless it had load. The part of cable that was on spool during pull was almost like the coil spring of a 58 Buick. Two men couldn't pull it straight, and the straight part of cable was terrible if using fairleeds to hook up several logs not in a straight line. Needless to say the operator didn't tolerate te cable very long skidding logs.

When I worked for AAA, we weren't allowed to touch a vehicle of someone who had been drinking for liability reasons. Deal is, if they are messed up and you get them going again and they kill someone, your butt will be in the same sling as the bar tender who served them. My Grandpa got sued back in the 50s because some drunk stopped and asked for directions and then drove straight into the gravel pit behind his house. Mom said it was pouring rain that night and they never heard the guy drive through the fence and down the 25ft bank into the water. He climbed back up the hill all wet and bloody where he ate the steering wheel. The drunk didn't win the law suit, but it was the point that he had the "brass ones" to try it.

(quoted from post at 22:47:41 04/19/09) The drunk didn't win the law suit, but it was the point that he had the "brass ones" to try it.

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The way juries are these days, I wouldn't bet on the outcome.