STUCK in sh... stuff.

[Jim Shooz]

If you hadn't had the ratchet another option would be to wrap the chain/rope a couple of turns around one of the driven wheels. A bit tricky on your own but with a few well chosen swear words it can be done. :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

((Free sensory detail here: While working to get a log spun under a tire, a golf ball size glob of crap slung up off the tire and splatted on the back of my left ear... and stuck... and ran down my neck. You're welcome. ))

About then is when I would have left it for yard art and sought grants from the Fund For the Arts to buy me a new tractor!

 

[GreenYellow]

If you hadn't had the ratchet another option would be to wrap the chain/rope a couple of turns around one of the driven wheels. A bit tricky on your own but with a few well chosen swear words it can be done. :thumbsup:

That was my next move if the ratchet didn't work. It was gonna be tough to get it under the bottom side though. Plus I was out of chains/straps after 200'. Lol
I had no shortage of vocabulary.

 

[GreenYellow]

About then is when I would have left it for yard art and sought grants from the Fund For the Arts to buy me a new tractor!

That's the point I about lost it. I had to sit there and breathe for a min. Felt like I could pick the tractor up and throw it out of the hole.

 

[savageactor7]

Good self recovery...

...we have 3 cable pulleys that have served us well in that regard.

 

[GreenYellow]

Good self recovery... ...we have 3 cable pulleys that have served us well in that regard.

Thanks!
I have a couple of them but (of course) they were at my house 20 miles away. I think I'll let one live in my truck toolbox from now on.

 

[Mace Canute]

So I was brush hogging at the in-laws yesterday evening. The ground was a little spongy, but not too bad. The wide turf tires on the tractor give a big footprint. I mowed for an hour with no issues whatsoever.

Then...It happened... I found a (hidden) broken sewer pipe. And the tractor took a dive. All 4 wheels at least a foot deep in shi... Sewer. It 'twerent going nowhere.

It was on the northeast corner of the field, about 200' out. I tried to find a route to drive my truck close enough. The ground just wasn't solid enough anywhere. I could NOT risk sinking my 8000lb truck somewhere out there.
After assessing it for a while, I decided the only option was to string together enough strap/chain to get to the nearest telephone pole, at 200'. I had 5 chains and 6 heavy straps in my truck, and it reached with about 2' to spare. After taking 20 minutes to string all that together, I could start actually doing something. I had no winch or come-along with me. The best I had was a trucker ratchet strap. I pulled all the slack out of the line (that I could) and started cranking the ratchet. The phone pole leaned and the tractor stayed. The 4" trucker strap was like a guitar string. I worked some more on the tractor with some logs and managed to spin one underneath one of the back wheels, and that freed some of the load.

((Free sensory detail here: While working to get a log spun under a tire, a golf ball size glob of crap slung up off the tire and splatted on the back of my left ear... and stuck... and ran down my neck. You're welcome. ))

Then it started slowly inching forward with the ratchet. The ratchet couldn't pull the whole load up out of the hole, so I put the tractor in low range 1st gear at an idle and let the wheels spin SUPER slow. This worked well, as I pulled a little slack with the ratchet, the tractor kept the slack pulled. After filling up the ratchet and starting over about 5-6 times I FINALLY got it onto more solid ground where it would float a little. It was soft enough my feet were sinking, but the wide tires were staying up ok. It took some more coaxing, but after a little over an hour, it was out.

Then I spent the next half hour washing the shi... sewer off the tractor (and myself) with the water hose and rolling up 200 feet of chains and straps. I finished the field at 9:45 last night. On the way home at 10, I grabbed supper from a convenient store -- a pizza stick burrito that was cooked around 6:00am that morning.

It was a real thrill... But it was (very strangely) a rewarding experience in one sense. It was a reminder that I CAN SURVIVE. Ingenuity, grit, a little "have to" (and a few tools) can prevail.

Was that a power pole or telephone pole? I ask because I've heard people refer to all poles as telephone poles. The consequences of each going over under a side pull can be drastically different and in the case of a power pole, deadly. During my 35 years as a Lineman, I've seen several poles that looked to be 100% solid but were hollow with various thicknesses of thin shell on the outside holding them up, some only had 1/4" of wood left at ground level.

 

[Egon]

Grasshoppering may have worked?

Mud plus mower deck = no fun.

 

[GreenYellow]

Was that a power pole or telephone pole? I ask because I've heard people refer to all poles as telephone poles. The consequences of each going over under a side pull can be drastically different and in the case of a power pole, deadly. During my 35 years as a Lineman, I've seen several poles that looked to be 100% solid but were hollow with various thicknesses of thin shell on the outside holding them up, some only had 1/4" of wood left at ground level.

It was a power pole. Specifically, a service wire pole. One pole between the transformer and the house. Good news is it, was solid, (I understand what you're saying though) and it had a guy wire about 45 degrees from my direction of pull. I was watching it pretty close, but yes, bringing down a power pole would be worse than being stuck in a sewer hole.

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[GreenYellow]

Grasshoppering may have worked? Mud plus mower deck = no fun.

Huh? Grasshoppering? I think I'm missing something.

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