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A Near Miss


Conductor562

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Today I hauled some wood, brush, and some wet bails of straw down to the burn pile. It's pretty steep, but I've taken heavy loads over the hill many times without issue. Hills are all part of the gig around here and like anything else, they giveth and they taketh away. I had an uncle killed on a tractor, so I'm alway mindful of what I'm doing.

As I started over the hill I could tell I had more weight than I anticipated, but there wasn't shit I could do about it at that point so I went down at a crawl. All at once the draw bar kicked up, the trailer jackknifed, and I was headed over the hill like I was on ice. There was no steering out of it, brakes were useless, and next thing I know the left side is raising up quickly. I slid up on the high fender and tried futility to steer out of it. There is a barb wire fence behind me and if I was still sliding when I got there it was a long tumble there. Just I was about to abandon ship, it stopped for some reason.

Thinking I'd probably tore something up seriously, I hopped off to find only one tiny scratch. As I'm standing there looking over the damage I kept hearing a popping noise. The coupler on the trailer was about to go and if it had, it wouldn't have been good.

I started throwing the heavy stuff off the trailer, but I just couldn't do it fast enough. I ran and got the truck, hooked a chain to the trailer, and pulled it up the hill far enough to get it unhooked.

All in all the situation turned out well for the tractor and I, but the trailer.....not so much.

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There was no saving the coupler. I chalked one wheel to allow me to pull it around straight, then I pulled it to the top of the hill where I could work on it. I heated it up, hammered on it, pried on it, cussed at it, but nothing helped.

I finally took a grinder and a chisel and cut the old coupler off, found a new one online for $25, and ordered it.

Don't ever let anyone tell you the Milwaukee Fuel grinder isn't a beast. I cut all this crap at different angles and really pushed into the cut, but it never flinched.

All in all this little boo boo wil cast $25 and a couple hours repair time. It could have been a lot worse.

Today did remind me I'm still alive. I haven't had an adrenaline rush like that in a good while!

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Glad your ok Conductor the good thing is you had the ROPS up that's a life saver plus being bucked in That's how people get thrown or crushed on tractors. Glad everything ended up working out for you. I can't even imagine how scary that was!!

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That was a close call. I'll take damage property of personal injury any day. I was backing up a trailer once and could not get it just right, so I jumped out to see what was going on. Except it was not in park and I was almost run over by my pickup. The only thing that saved me was it hung up and bent the tonge of the trailer. But I was alive.

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Good to hear u made it through your incident w/o any serious injuries. An unfortunate byproduct of being a Manly Man is getting hurt. We offer put ourselves into questionable situations most try to avoid, smiling and happy to sweat. It only takes that 1 time,

I'm liking that cordless grinder! After my accident, tangling the grinder cord/cutting off nose, I think I want to investigate the Milwaukee.

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Damn Travis, that could have got ugly real quick. Glad you came through unscathed. My grandpa tended his acreage with a Kubota, but in this case you sent it in to do a Ram's job. Happens to the best of us, as was mentioned, squirrelly situations can be byproducts of being a DIYer.

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