Flat out of luck

This reminds me of the time I had a flat in early morning rush hour on a 6 lane highway at a basket weave. The off ramp I needed was off the left-most lane and of course it was fast traffic. My left rear tire blew on the off ramp where there was very minimal shoulder. I pulled off to the left side as far as I could so I could just barely open my door. Of course it was the hottest day in July and I believe the temperature was in the mid 90 degrees at 7:30 am in the late 1980's (before cell phones). I managed to get the jack out but as I was jacking up the car, the jack was sinking into the hot asphalt but luckily I found a small piece of plywood in the trunk to go under the jack and that helped. What a gooey mess of hot asphalt sticking to the wood and jack AND the flat tire. But only the flat side of the tire was gooey.
I found an old blanket in the trunk and wrapped the tire in the blanket and stood at the side of the road and put out my thumb. It wasn't long before someone took pity on me and stopped to pick me up. It was a dear older lady whose heart was stronger than her fears about hitch hikers.
We had a good chat and she dropped me off at my work because, ( I still cannot believe this) she worked across the road. In a city of over a million people what are the odds of that?
So my morning of bad luck had a silver lining.
Once at work I phoned a buddy for help and I managed to get a new tire onto the rim, replaced on my car that was still crippled on the off ramp, but at 2pm the traffic was much better. When I drove off, I had a thump thump thump from the front left tire as it had also collected some hot asphalt.

They would put you in Jail for hauling that many tires now,,I think in Ohio you need a permit to haul over 20 at a time. My how times have changed...

In the State of Ohio, you must be licensed to haul more than 10 tires at a time. If you have more than 10 tires, or have a large tire pile to be cleaned up, call Liberty Tire (330.868.0097), TIMCO, LLC Recycling Division (330.523.6048) or US Tire Transportation (216.441.0950).

feel sorry for him just a working man trying to make a buck

Yes we have all been there...Darn it.

So you are saying if I go down and buy new tires for my 18 wheeler I cannot haul them home. Here in Tennessee I can go buy a truck load long as I have the money and drive home or to the shop. Crazy laws.

You make your own luck, sometimes- He should have been hauling about half that much. As John Wayne said, "Life is hard. It's harder if you're stupid."

Reminds me of the story of my father-in-law needing to go out and repair a broke down fuel truck. Found it had run out of gas. The driver sure got a ribbing on that one!

I was headed to a tractor pull near Richmond VA about 20 years ago going down the ramp onto I64 the radiator blew on my 1 ton GMC pulled over, in about 5 minutes a truck stops turns out to be a fellow I had met at a tractor show some time back.He owned a big construction company with the shop nearby we patched up the radiator good enough to get to his shop he called
around found me a radiator and we installed it and I was on my way.Talk about good fortune and a very nice guy.

Also reminds me of incident in on I95 down in NC a few years ago traffic was backed up and we moved forward there was a pickup that was up side down in the middle of I95 that had,had a load
of watermelons on it.Watermelons all over the place and the 1/2 ton pickup had been pulling a trailer also loaded with melons.Probably blew a tire and was way overloaded judging by how many melons were on the road.Fellow was standing there with a trooper not a good day for him.

Reminds me of the Alfred Hitchcock
Presents episode where thieves steal a
tanker truck in the desert, it stalls or
gets stuck, then the thieves die from
dehydration. The end of the episode shows
the tank was filled with water.

My dad always put his spare and jack in the back of his truck, and then would load a bunch of crap in the bed, then would have a flat on the rear, and have to unload all the junk to get the jack and Flat spare out.

The rear axle hub does not look like a 3/4 ton axle, so it is probably a half ton pickup. There are three columns of tires with at least 100 tires in each. 300 tires times 20 pounds minimum per tire equals 6000 pound minimum load on that half ton pickup. I wonder if the rear axle was bottomed out on the frame when he started out? He made his own bad luck when he overloaded the truck by a factor of three more.