Pulling Equipment on the Highway

I soon found out that I could not pull the sucker faster than 27 miles per hour or it started swinging wildly side-to-side. About 1/4 of the way home, one tire decided to come off the cultipacker (it had dual tires on each side)... of course it was the outside tire on the right side... the one that runs on the shoulder of the highway. I had to just torch the last lug bolt off because we were on a stretch of highway that was busy with no shoulder. And, I didn't have a spare tire for it. Ran it the rest of the way on one tire on that side (and lots of prayers)!

In Mt Carmel, Illinois I was going through town and the streets are really narrow. I was over the center line and passing a row of parallel parked vehicles when this car decided to not wait for me to clear the line of parked cars... it met me as I was going passed a 1 ton dually with "west-coast" mirrors. After I passed the dually I had not heard any crashing/glass breakage as I took the mirrors off.... so I asked my passenger that was with me, "how close was I to the mirrors?" He says, "You don't want to know!"

We finally got the thing home safely just before dark..... entire trip took about 16 hours!

One of the drivers was going up a hill on a 4 lane highway, 65 MPH speed limit. He said the cab started filling up with smoke and the engine died. He was off to the right as far as he could get, but there was a guard rail there. The toolbar was hanging out in the slow lane about 5 feet when I got there.

Most of the wiring was burn out of the dash, ALL of the wiring was burnt on the engine, the starter was melted and the battery cables were burnt off.

We made a mad dash to town (about 8 miles), and found a Freightliner dealership that sold Detroit Diesel parts.

Armed with a truckload of parts and several rolls of wire we flew back to the machine and started replacing parts. We put the vital stuff on and did some hotwiring and got it to run long enough to get up the hill and completely off the road.

That's when the state police showed up and said we better get it fixed and out of there before dark (about 30 minutes away) or there wouldn't be anything left by morning. We managed to get a headlight and flashers working and took off for a nearby farmer we did custom spreading for.

It took a couple days getting everything back in shape. I've slept a lot since then, but it seems like there was a short inside the battery box, causing some ground wires to become shorted on power wires,thus frying the electrical system.

At least it was not full of manure . Talk about the s**t hitting the fan !

Ford Man