Was up at 2 am and on the road at 2:30. Misty rain and patchy fog, heavy at times, for a good part of the drive down to the Port of Baltimore. When they opened, I checked in, then went and picked up my machine. Loaded a Caterpillar 320 Excavator that is going to Miami, Florida.
Everything was going good. I made great time in the Port. Then I went to leave. That's when things took a turn for the worse. My permit route takes me straight out the gate, straight through the traffic light, then up and over a set of railroad tracks. They have routed all of us that way for several years. Well, this time I didn't make it. I bottomed out and was stuck on the tracks. I called the cops right away. I also called our maintenance shop and had them send a wrecker. While they were on the way, I did my best to get unstuck. I tried several things none of which worked. I quickly discovered that I also had a mechanical problem with both the truck and trailer. The trailer was not getting any air and neither was the airbags on the truck. I also had a leak in one of the air tanks on the trailer.
Lots of cops showed up, four Maryland Transportation Police, one Baltimore County Police, and one Railroad Police. Two different wrecker companies arrived with a total of four trucks.
When all attempts to get air to the bags didn't work, two of the large wreckers got on either side of me. Each ran a cable to the trailer. Then they pulled me in tandem across the tracks and got me unstuck. Sounds easier than it was. We then went down the road to a wider area to try to get air to the bags on both the truck and trailer. There was a huge back up of oversized vehicles waiting to go into the Port and to get out of the Port. I created quite a mess. This is the ground clearance I had.
The wrecker guys were able to bypass the air tank to get air to the rest of the trailer in order to raise the trailer airbags. Meanwhile, I found out that I had a bad switch in the truck that would not put air in the truck airbags. After switching it on and off about 50 times it finally worked and the bags filled as they should. Here is the trailer air tank before they bypassed the tank.
Here it is after the bypass. So simple, but it worked.
Now I had enough ground clearance to get out of there.
I went to the Daily yard in Baltimore. The folks in Carlisle decided that I should unload the excavator and leave it there. Then drive up to Carlisle to get everything fixed. By the time I got the excavator unloaded and parked out of the way, I didn't have enough hours to get to Carlisle today. I went over to the TA truck stop in Baltimore for the night. I'll leave early enough in the morning to get there when they get there for work.
