I rolled my butt out of the sleeper bed of the Mack at a little after five in the afternoon. Once I was dressed, I pulled back the curtain, looked out the windows and swore to myself. It was mid-January, it was snowing, and it looked cold. The people walking in and out of the Love's building were bundled up like it was Alaska instead of East Tennessee. That night was going to be one long-ass drive that I wasn't going to enjoy very much.
To people in the northern US, half an inch of snow on the ground is just a nuisance. An inch, like it looked had settled on Love's truck lot, might cause them to leave for work or to go shopping fifteen minutes early, but that's about it. An inch of snow in Tennessee can pretty much shut down everything until the road crews get out and start plowing and spreading salt.
That wouldn't be so bad if the people would stay home until that happens, but they don't. They get in their cars and trucks and hit the road. Often they hit each other as they try to navigate on the slippery pavement. Several of them will end up sitting in their car or truck in the median of the interstate or off and down the side while waiting for a tow truck to pull them back out.
I suppose it's not really their fault. It doesn't snow very often or very much in the South, so people here don't learn how to drive when the roads are slick. They'll slow down a little, but forget they can't make sharp turns or stop quickly. It only takes one hard turn while changing lanes and they start to lose control. They try to brake then.
Most cars today have anti-lock brakes, so they'll probably be able to get it slowed down enough to straighten things out. If they don't have anti-lock, the back end of the vehicle, especially a pickup with no weight in the bed, tries to catch up with the front when the rear brakes lock up. It spins out right there in the middle of other cars with drivers trying to stay on the road. Those other drivers also try to brake, and the result is usually at least one collision..
Antilock can't do anything once the spin starts. It only helps you stop without starting to spin and in return, it stretches your stopping distance. That means you might not lose control, but you might run into the vehicle ahead of you. I remember a huge pile-up with forty-six cars one winter when I was driving for Allied Logistics, and that's what caused it to be so bad. I was stopped in the lane going in the opposite direction, and watched as car after car tried to stop. Even if they could manage that, they were hit from behind by another car that couldn't.
I couldn't wait for the plows that night. I'd stopped at the Love's outside of Dandridge because I'd been on the road for ten and a half hours and I couldn't make the Love's on the other side of Knoxville before my eleven hours were up. It was either stop in Dandridge or pull off on the shoulder in the middle of nowhere for ten hours of rest.
I was due at a factory dock in Nashville in six hours. When I checked the weather on the laptop beside the bed, it said the band of snow stretched from the Tennessee line almost all the way west to Ashland City. It looked like it would probably take me most of that six hours to make what was normally only about a four hour drive.
After starting the coffee pot and then pulling on a jacket, I walked the hundred or so feet to the building. I could have stuck a frozen sandwich in the microwave and had my breakfast, but I figured since it was gonna be a long night, I'd treat myself in advance. The egg and bacon burritos looked pretty good, so I bought a couple and headed back to the Mack. An hour later, I pulled out of the parking lot, down the street and then took the ramp onto I-40 West. It had stopped snowing and my headlights showed me the twin tracks other cars and trucks had cut through the snow that covered the asphalt.
A lot of people, including some truck drivers, don't like driving at night. It's dark and since there aren't a lot of people on the road, there's not much to see except what your headlights show you. I like driving at night for the same reasons. I don't mind being alone on the road, and in fact, I'd rather have it that way. Without a lot of normal daytime traffic that would make me slow down and then accelerate over and over, the Mack would roll on at a steady speed that saves fuel and eats up the miles before you know it.
I-40 wasn't particularly slick in most spots, but then, my rig weighed a little over sixty thousand. As long as I didn't hit snow that had been packed down hard, that weight would hold me pretty tight to the pavement. Braking could still be a problem, but the Mack and my trailer have anti-lock and I was going to keep my speed down so I wasn't too concerned. There wasn't that much snow left on the road anyway, and the outside temperature on the dash of the Mack told me it was just a little below freezing. What snow was left on the road was more like slush, so apparently the highway guys had already been out with their salt trucks.
I saw headlights coming up behind me and whatever it was was flying low. When it moved into the left lane, it fishtailed a little, but then got straightened out and went by me doing about eighty to my sixty. That speed was crazy but the driver would probably have done OK if the road conditions had stayed like they were. As the Ranger pickup went by me, though, I saw the yellow sign on the shoulder that said "CAUTION Bridge May Freeze Before Pavement".
That's a common sign before bridges and overpasses in the South. Even if the temperature is below freezing, the earth under the pavement will keep it above freezing for quite a while. Bridges and overpasses are another story. Cold air blowing under the road there can cause the surface to freeze into ice even though the rest of the road doesn't. I backed off the pedal a little just in case, and it was a good thing I did.
I was sitting high enough I saw the glare of ice on the overpass long before I got there and slowed down some more. The driver of the Ranger finally saw it just as it started across. A second later, I saw brake lights come on, then head lights, then brake lights again as the truck spun in a slow circle. I don't know what kept it from hitting the rail one side of the overpass or the other, but it didn't. The pickup made one complete circle and was almost lined up with the road when it got back off the ice again. The tires caught in the pavement on the other side, and the Ranger started swerving all over the road as the driver tried to correct for the spin.
The driver managed to keep the Ranger on the road long enough to get past the guardrail leading away from the overpass. It would have been better if it had hit the guardrail. If it had, it would have been torn up some, but wouldn't have run down the embankment of the median.
As soon as the Ranger started spinning, I hit the dash button for the emergency lights and began stopping as fast as I could without doing the same thing. When I finally got the rig on the shoulder, I was a couple hundred feet from where the Ranger sat out in the median. I pulled on my jacket, grabbed the flashlight I keep beside my seat and got out to see if anybody was hurt. I heard the tires on the Ranger screaming as the driver tried to back up, but it wasn't going anywhere. I don't think there's anything other than solid ice that's slicker than wet snow on grass.
The temperature might have only been about freezing, by the by the time I got to where the Ranger had dived for the median, slipped and fell twice down going down the slope, and then got to the driver's side door, my teeth were starting to chatter.
The woman in the driver's seat was leaning over the steering wheel with her head in her hands, and she was shaking. I tapped on the window twice before she looked up. She rolled down the window when I made a cranking motion with my hands.
"Are you hurt", I asked.
"No, I think I'm OK. I'm just scared, that's all. Can you pull me back up on the road?"
I shook my head.
"I'm driving the semi you just passed. You'll have to call a tow truck to get you out."
"I can't. I don't have my phone with me."
"Well, get out and come back to my truck. I'll let you use mine."
When she shut off the engine, opened the door and grabbed her purse, then stepped out of the Ranger, I saw that in addition to not knowing how to drive on slick roads, the woman didn't know how to dress for cold weather either. All she had on was a T-shirt with a low-cut V neck, jeans, and tennis shoes. She was also shivering.
"Don't you have a jacket", I asked.
She shook her head.
"No. I was in a hurry and I didn't think I'd need one. I never thought about anything like this happening."
"Well, let's get going before you freeze to death. You can warm up in my truck."
I got her in the passenger side, closed that door and then got back in the driver's seat. I was more than a little surprised when I turned on the cab lights so she could see to use my phone.
There wasn't much of a moon that night, so down in the median, it was black as the ace of spades. My flashlight is a good light, but the beam isn't very wide and we didn't spend much time down there so I didn't really get a good look at her. Going back to my truck I was more concerned with keeping myself and her from slipping and falling down than looking at her. There in the bright LED lighting of the cab, I did look.
