Compacted Compactor

dperone · July 16, 2020

We were called by one of our customers to head out to our local can opener, an 11'9" bridge that has an insatiable appetite for trucks. Thier driver had a 20 yard compactor box on the back that he apparently forgot how high it was, and it struck the bridge. When it struck, it snapped the 1" thick cable and ripped the box off the truck and promptly landed right under the bridge. As their truck was now sans winch to pull the box up, they called us for a hand. We responded in my Renegade and our 16 series bed.

When we arrived we found the box under the bridge on the far side of the direction we wanted to take it after we loaded it. We could have loaded it from the other side of the bridge but choose not to for 2 reasons. We wanted to load the compactor on the nose of the truck to get the weight up front, and if we took it the other way there was another low bridge between us and the customers yard that we would have had to detour around. Luckily the can had 4 good wheels so we decided to winch it through the bridge to get to a spot we could load it.

Once clear of the bridge it was just a simple matter of loading the can on the bed and delivering it a few miles to the customers yard. I did offer to leave the can on the side of the road next to the bridge to make cleaning up future bridge hits there easier, but the railroad didn't have a spot to keep it.