The romance of the open road

I am presently sitting in my truck in the dark. Alone. Typing. In the middle of an Interstate.

A few hours ago, a truck pulling a double-trailer rig apparently swerved to try and avoid running over someone in a much smaller vehicle. Instead of swerving, the whole rig flipped onto its side and slid sideways.*

I don't know yet whether there were fatalities. There were other complications. Double-trailer rigs in the East are usually run by LTL** companies. And LTL companies require their drivers to have hazmat endorsements for a reason. Of the many and varied packages those trailers carried, several of them apparently contained some amount of hazardous materials. So all has come to a halt while the EPA decides what to do.

The wreck covers most of the westbound lanes. I'm on the eastbound side. A short distance from an exit ramp. So why am I here? Because hazmat spill response is strictly regulated. One of those regulations involves an area surrounding the accident that has to be kept clear of people. An area that, in this case, includes all lanes of the Interstate, in both directions--and the exit ramp.

Nothing to speak of has moved on this highway in over two hours now.*** Nothing to speak of is likely to move for some while to come. But of course I can't really relax. When it DOES move, I'd better be ready to move with it, or someone is going to complain about the island in the stream. No naps for me.

Hm. Something seems to be happening. I wonder if it will involve movement. Guess I'd better move to the driver's seat and find out.

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False alarm, sort of. Basically someone got an idea of how long this was really going to take, and all the little vehicles (the ones that could manage a U-turn) went the way of the nice people mentioned in the footnote.*** Don't blame them. If I could turn this thing around I'd do it too. A few of the crazier drivers actually have. As well as an intercity bus.

Meanwhile, the police have asked us to move over and clear the left lane for emergency vehicles. I guess it's a good thing so many little vehicles have bailed. We actually managed to clear the lane (mostly).

###

It's daylight, and I've had a shower and a meal. They finally released us last night, and I fumbled my way to a truck stop. At two in the morning. I won't be able to move the truck again before noon. And my load was due at 10 am. Joy forever.

This is not one of the more cheerful entries here. Sorry 'bout that. But at least this is the first time something of this order has happened to me. Some of the other drivers I talked to (standing on the road and talking was the main entertainment for a lot of us, last night) said it's the kind of thing that will happen sooner or later, but not all that often. The average among the experienced drivers was about every 6-8 years. I carefully didn't listen to the detailed descriptions of what caused those other backups. Some were kind of grisly...

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*There's a reason we tend to let you little vehicles do all the weaving, lane-changing, speeding up, slowing down, etc. Trying to jerk one of these around is a good way to--well, do what this poor fellow did.

**LTL: "Less-(than-a-)Truck-Load"
A company that moves things for people who don't have enough freight to fill a trailer all by themselves. UPS and FedEx both have LTL divisions, but there are a fair number or others.
Since an LTL company has lots of packages from lots of different customers on each trailer, they can't be too anal-retentive about what they're carrying. You're not likely to find explosives or red fuming nitric acid on an LTL rig, but many of their customers will want to move things like charcoal lighter fluid or cleaning compounds. So when an LTL truck wrecks, hazmat procedures often come into play.

***Well, unless you count all the people illegally creeping the wrong way down the shoulder of the road to the "official vehicles only" U-turn drive, where they illegally get on the Interstate going the other way. In this circumstance I don't mind. It relieves the tedium, especially when one moves too far over and slides into the ditch. (Not a bad ditch, but they're sure not getting out of it by driving up the bank in the rain. Oh, did I mention it's raining?)
(Be nice, I tell myself. It only happened once, and I didn't really laugh. Sardonic smile, maybe...)