Ontario, CA - Thirty-seven hours a day

When I left off, I had just broken down and was left waiting on a tow truck. The guy who arrived was a bit... clueless, to put it nicely. Senile might be a more apt term. It took four attempts to actually get a hold of someone on the phone, then ten minutes to fix the screwed up directions he'd been given, then another thirty for him to show up at the truck. He spent nearly an hour hooking up to it, only to find that he was missing a fitting for the rig. He left, came back an hour later with the right part, took yet another hour to hook up to it properly this time, and then we went on the way. By this point, it was nearly 2 AM local time; I was dozing off in the passenger seat.

I came to my senses rather quickly, though, as the tow truck driver started hollering "I don't have any brakes!" Sure enough, he was pushing the pedal to the floor to no avail, despite having adequate air in the tanks. The Jake brake wasn't enough to hold the truck back, either; 110,000 pounds (70k for me, 40k for the tow) is extremely challenging even with fully-operable equipment, but without brakes, there's no chance. Then, with no immediately obvious warning, the engine died. He started asking me what to do; I told him to try restart the engine, throw it into the lowest gear he could catch, and fire the jake brake up. That didn't work, though; he turned the key but the engine wouldn't turn over. Thus, in the span of less than half a minute, we lost every means of controlling the vehicle's speed, while still descending a considerable grade. The speed limit on the slope was 40; we were up to 45 with no braking mechanism at all. I'm shuddering just writing about it.

The tow truck driver, however, did about the only thing he could do. He ran well up an upslope on the side of the road, taking it way up the embankment, then bringing it back down. 45 mph fell to 40. Another excursion off-road and we were down to 35. However, the truck was gaining speed ever-faster as the downgrade steepened, we were up to 40 again in the time it took him to catch his break. Then, he simply announced "I've gotta go" and took the thing even further up the side, knocking out several road signs. I clutched my seat belt to my chest, holding on for dear life, while the entire combination bounced violently. I didn't even see the flatbed truck on the shoulder until a split-second before the collision, in which the tow truck's driver's side collided with the passenger side of the flatbed trailer. Then, as suddenly as the vehicle had gone out of control, we were at a stop.

As I felt myself to ensure that no, I hadn't left this mortal coil, I looked over at the driver. He was in... bad shape. I thought he'd strangled himself on the seat belt; he was dangling limply from it, making a gurgling noise. In panic, I jumped out of the truck, ran toward the road, and started waving for anyone to call 911. My cell phone had died while I was waiting on the tow, so I couldn't. The flatbed driver was still hunting around for his phone when another trucker pulled over and called for an ambulence. By the time I walked back up to the tow truck, the driver had, miraculously, regained consciousness. He was bleeding from his right temple and had no recollection of what happened even after we repeatedly explained it, all classic signs of a concussion. Miraculously, that was the worst of anyone's injuries; both I and the flatbed driver were completely unhurt. The ambulence showed up perhaps 15 minutes later and the tow truck driver was taken to the hospital.

The police came as well, taking statements, information, and all those things that cops do when an accident happens. We were near Castaic, I think; it was on I-5, ear the bottom of a mountain, at a place starting with a C. Additional tow trucks were arranged - I still find it darkly ironic that a tow truck needed a tow truck - because the damage to all the vehicles was severe.

• The tow truck was totaled. The entire steer axle was ripped off, lying underneath his drive tandems, likely aiding as a block. The engine was toast; the windshield, cracked, the frame, warped. It's hard to imagine any components even being salvaged from what's left of that, save for perhaps his passenger side mirror.
• My truck came out the best of any equipment involved. Sadly, that's not saying much. I'm holding out hope that they can repair it, because I didn't see any obvious damage to any major components, though the body needs a lot of work; there are at least two holds that go through to the sleeper. I turned the key to run the diagnostics, though, and "low coolant" was the only alarm tripped, just as it was before the accident.
• My trailer is toast. The driver's side was split open by the flatbed's fender mirror, with a gash going from the front corner to the third-to-last vertical support, roughly 45 feet long. It caused the bottom rail and floor to sag considerably. The freight appeared to be undamaged, aside from the pallets shifted, which was confirmed later in the day.
• The flatbed's tractor is ruined. Massive body damage, multiple flat tires, and what appeared to be a complete loss of engine oil. Amazingly, though, they were able to start it up and move it around on the scene so the tow trucks could work more easily.
• The flatbed trailer is also gone. He was hauling scrap, so it's not like any cargo damage would even be noticeable, but his passenger-side rear tires were gone; we didn't even find them anywhere on the hill.. The front axle was likely cracked as well, but all the pieces were still attached to the trailer, so that might not be a complete loss.

I spent some time talking to the flatbed driver, who was a Mexican immigrant doing cross-border work. He owned his truck, so this has to be a huge blow to him for a whole lot of reasons. His family came up to help him move things out of the rig before they towed it away. Most of the other officers and workers on the scene seemed impressed by the sheer volume of damage involved; several of them said that this was unlike anything they'd ever seen before despite being out there for a decade or more.

It was dawn before any progress was made on disentangling the mess. They had to get a rotator out to just hold my trailer up, ensuring it wouldn't collapse. It took nearly three hours for them to just extract the tow truck from my rig, and another hour for them to pick up the remaining pieces and haul it away. The flatbed took somewhat longer to settle, as they had to move the trailer and truck seperately; they left perhaps another two hours after that. Meanwhile I was left waiting for them to transload my freight onto another trailer, since mine was in danger of collapse the moment that rotator let go. There's still a quarrel going on between customer service and the towing company over that mess, as the towing company insisted on doing it their way, even going to far as to insist they deliver the load themselves. This is the same company who towed my truck in the first place and who is at fault in the accident. I heard them saying they figured they'd lost us as an account even before they started being dicks about the freight situation. Perhaps they just assumed that, since we weren't going to be doing business with them again, they may as well make us regret calling them in the first place. Yeah, that's a great business model...

At least they tried to be civil toward me, offering me space in the sleeper of the semi they'd brought down. I didn't take that up until rather late, since I just wasn't tired at that point; I was more worried about getting the situation resolved before I fell asleep. Ultimately, they put as much freight as possible into their trailer (not ours, another point of contention with customer service), then let me ride along to their facility while we waited for them to sort out towing my tractor. Someone was supposed to come from the OC and give me a ride in the company car to a hotel, but after an hour and a half of waiting, the tow company just had me ride along with someone who had a call going that direction and dropped me off there.

And so, here I am, writing up what is probably my longest post in this blog to date. I've been up since about 7 AM yesterday, more than 37 hours ago. Operations has encouraged me to take my time and get some rest, since even they acknowledged that it's been a long day. On the bright side, they did commend me repeatedly for keeping my wits about me and remaining professional about everything, even as they insisted that I think more about my well-being and less about what was going to happen with the truck, the freight, or anything else that's happened today. One bit of good news: the tow truck driver was released from the hospital with nothing more than a few stitches on his head and on one leg. What could have been a disaster with multiple fatalities ended up as simply a half-million dollars in damage to equipment without any serious injuries.

I'm probably going to sleep at least tweleve hours now, possibly more, then call ops around 11 AM tomorrow morning to find out what's going on. If my truck is indeed totaled, I'll be here until they assign me another unit. If they decide they're going to do the repairs after all, then I'm here until those repairs are finished. Either way, I'll certainly be here tomorrow (I need a 34 hour break anyway.) and there's a chance I'll be here quite a bit longer than that.

California Catastrophe