Hubby and I decided to take a nice drive today. For over a week, the weather has been just rotten -- rain, wind and even snow! His truck (which I have been driving in the nasty weather) was just as dirty as a truck could be, so we decided to take a nice drive and go to the car wash -- which is about 20 miles away.
Just a few short miles from home, we saw a semi truck pulled off on the side of the highway. Littering the highway behind him in both lanes were remnants of the tires he had apparently lost just moments before. Cars are swerving to avoid the debris in the road -- and we began to slow down to do the same...
Then at the same instant we saw it, we also hit it. HARD. A huge piece of metal in the road. The front tire of our truck ran over the metal piece and catapulted it into the underside of the truck. The impact was actually so hard, I thought we had been hit by another car. The jolt knocked everything out of place inside the truck and even turned the windshield wipers on.
Hubby pulled over and checked out the damage. The piece of metal tore out three holes in the panel underneath the doors. At least it didn't tear or puncture the tires so it was drivable. We picked the piece of metal up to get it out of the road so nobody else would hit it. Hubby then pulled across the road and parked in front of the semi to talk to the driver. The driver, who was rather irritable (to state it kindly), basically said it wasn't his fault we hit something in the road.
So we circle back around, park waaaay behind the irritable driver sitting in his truck and called the police. Officer showed up a few minutes later and talked to hubby and then drove up the road to talk to the truck driver. They talked quite awhile. Officer then returns to us and verified that Mr. Truck Driver was indeed a bit irritable but calmed down after chatting a bit.
Our insurance will call for the police report. The trucker was working for a company so hopefully their insurance will pay to fix our truck.
Not exactly the nice drive we had planned! But it could've been so much worse and we are very thankful that nobody was hurt.
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| Using the 'stalker zoom" on my camera. |
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| We parked far away from the irritable truck driver. |
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| Metal piece in the road -- about 18" long and very heavy. |
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| End of the metal piece -- this is what tore into our truck. |
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| I was hoping he would turn the lights back on so I could get a better photo (a la Jurrasic Park - LOL) |
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| First photo of the damage. See why we were going to the car wash? :) |
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| After the car wash -- hubby pushed the piece in a little bit so it didn't look so icky. |
