17 Jun Jada: Accidents can happen

One thing I’ve learned from harvest is things will always go awry at the most inopportune time. Break-downs will happen when you need to get to the next stop, tires will most definitely go flat when you are loaded and moving to a new stop, and accidents will happen when the boss has stepped away for a bit.

As previously mentioned in my last post, the boys finished up our Texas harvest when we were in transit to Dallas. What I didn’t mention is the crop was getting ready at our next stop. Due to this, the guys moved to Kiowa, KS a day before us.

That’s when it happened. . . . Oak’s tire blew in transit. You know how we are always saying how we wake up early on moving day to avoid the heat because you are less likely to blow a tire? Well, this time our promptness to leave didn’t pay off. Oak was a few miles outside of Taloga, OK when he recalls hearing a load burst. He knew right then and there he needed to keep his load on the road. He recalls, using all his weight to try to keep his rig on the road.

While he was unable succeed due to being outweighed by several tons, he did all the right things once his load hit the ditch. With one lapse in judgment things could have gone a lot differently. If you are familiar with the roads in this area, you will understand why he was lucky the accident happened where it did.

To everyone’s relief, only a truck and fence were injured in this accident. The crew members who witnessed the accident said Oak didn’t get out of his truck right away which made them fear he was hurt. Thankfully he was only shocked.

The culprit of Oak’s accident. The tire was new so it had to be the heat. When the blow-out happened Oak figured it was on his trailer, but in actuality it was the front passenger side tire of the truck.

If you lookclosely at the grain cart, you can see it almost fell off the trailer. One sharp turn to the steering wheel could have caused drastically different results. Kudos to Oak for keeping his cool!

Oak and his rig which were rolling along at around 50 mph took quite a joyride before coming to a stop in a farmer’s field. He took out a fence and hit a gas line.

A picture of the damage the posts did to the blue beauty.

The farmer’s whose land Oak’s load landed on was very helpful to us. He brought his tractor down to help us get our truck moved. It’s nice to know there are nice people out there! 

To our surprise the trailer had minimal damage, while the tractor and grain cart had absolutely no damage. The trailer doesn’t even have wheel damage- only minor damage where the chains attached to the trailer snapped during the accident.

On our trip to Kiowa, Leon, Frank, Kaidence and I stopped to check out the scene of the accident and good ol’ number 10. Here Leon inspects the damage on the new radiator he just installed this winter.

Frank checks the damage on the truck’s passenger side.

All Aboard Wheat Harvest is sponsored by High Plains Journal and Syngenta. Jada can be reached at jada@allaboardharvest.com.