The Flying Scumburger
Truck
pretty much the same thing as mine except it had pipe bumpers in rear also
It was nothing for
us to be called out to some crazy directions and when you are tired and have to
read someone’s chicken scratch roughed out on a borrowed piece of paper while
driving down the road, you sometimes might miss a few things, like the right
road. We were out on a long job and I was working for two days by myself and
had already seen three jobs while doing my 4 days on and had maybe 4 hrs. sleep
I stole, while the tool was tripping out of the hole.
Tripping is a term
we applied to the tool as it logged or recorded all the various rock formations
in about 3000 feet of hole. By looking at their density and porosity we could
tell approximately what rock strata we were going through. And when there was a
correlating rise in temperature and you could see a corresponding spike in the
reading, as it shot above the 55 degree threshold in a sudden temperature spike.
You would know you were in a hydrocarbon layer of oil or gas rock strata, and
along with this would be a more porous sandstone with a certain density
corresponding to the known densities of oil bearing rock from core samples taken
on a another well or possibly that well while drilling.
It was a slow and
monotonous process and required only the engineer to be at the controls in the
event the tool would hang in the hole. It would run maybe 12 feet per minute as
it snailed itself up the well. These were very expensive highly sophisticated
tools for measuring rock physical characteristics in a time proven manner, and
very hard to recover had our line snapped or hung up in the hole. It usually
required a fishing expedition to try and recover the tool regardless of cost
involved, as most used radioactive sources and would render an oil well useless
as the oil would be tainted with radioactivity if never retrieved. I trusted
the seasoned engineer at the controls and jumped into the sleeper we had on the
truck to catch a few Z’s while he finished the job. He woke me and said we were
ready to go, and I said ,you mean pack up equipment, and he said no he had
already had everything stowed on the truck , and had called the office and they
were sending us on our fourth job and that we needed to get going. He knew I
needed sleep and let me sleep as long as he could. He said the next rig was
waiting on us. So in 2 days working the first sleep I was able to get was the
four hours in the sleeping bunk inside an idling truck in the middle of
nowhere.
We had a coffee
pot and water and soon I was drinking a cup of coffee and was looking at the
set of directions Scotty had left me as he went ahead to find the well site and
let them know I was on my way. I stowed the coffee pot and grabbed some more
coffee in a cup and headed to the front of the truck. It was as they described
a cab over 4070 international with full sleeper, leather interior, pipe bumpers
and a PTO winch that would pull you out most anything. It was over 30 feet long
on an extended beefed up chassis and also had pipe bumpers and stabilizers in
the rear. Painted bright blue with the Scumburger emblem in white, an awesome
looking machine even by today’s standards though, I doubt few exist as we beat
the heck out of them twisting the frames and generally just driving them in the
ground. Springs were constantly replaced and maintenance was ongoing. When you
were not driving the truck to a job, you were fixing something.
This wasn’t all
bad as you gained in depth knowledge of the workings of a larger semi type truck,
but this was in actuality a semi on a long wheel based tandem axle frame. An
oilfield special edition generated by years of abuse and redesign to make them
the tanks they were. As I said before it had 40 speeds forward and 8 reverse by
means of a ten speed Road Ranger transmission and a four speed auxiliary transmission.
There was a gear for almost any type of mud and torque situation you could
possibly get these trucks into. With the weight of the winch on back and with
15000 feet of steel cable, the truck was maxed out on the weight limit before
adding the tools and equipment we would take along with us.
It was
surprisingly quick in the pickup and go department as it had a large Cat engine
with a turbocharged induction system giving the truck plenty of get up and go
as you went up through the gears. Half to three quarters of the gears you never
used anyhow till you were off road, instead you left the auxiliary in high and
shifted with the regular Road Ranger transmission. I was soon getting gears as
I left the last well site and was hitting the open road sipping on my still hot
coffee and trying to wake up.
The next job wasn’t
a real far away job as we seemed to never have back to back jobs. One job would
be in Youngstown and three hours later you would be in Marietta, Ohio and then back
to Mansfield, before heading home to Wooster where we were stationed out of. So
getting a job outside of Mount Eaton on the way home from Marietta meant we may
have a chance for some home time before the next round of rigs would come in. There
must have been thirty rigs drilling in Ohio at the time, and each rig would
require two trips out which meant there would be 60 trips out for well logging
alone not counting perforating or whatever else we would do. And if our shop
was slowing in work and our crews and equipment were needed in another state we
would haul butt for that state and do more wells. I once put in 114 hours in
one week on a trip to New York State to do a well. Actually went and lost my
turn at my days off.
The way it
works is you have three operators or drivers per truck, and with one person
taking 2 days off and coming back to work to relieve the next guy. This allows the company to have 24 hour day
coverage and 365 days a year as you worked holidays also. Works fine but having
a weekend off is a luxury as the weekdays are odd numbered and it was rare to
get a Saturday and Sunday off together. And sometimes one of your coworkers
would be off for vacation or whatever and you would be alone with the engineer
in his blue LTD to work the jobs coming in. In theory it sounds good, but when
you are not guaranteed those days off or you have to plan around your days off
or you work the entire four days as I did when I went to New York state. It becomes a
pain in the ass real quick.
As I was driving down the road, I managed to
miss the turnoff as I headed up St. Rte.
250 into Mt. Eaton opting to make a right turn at the first road to the
right to bring me back to where I was supposed to be. It was an Amish buggy
path, more a shortcut for the Amish to keep them off the main road, and
although still navigable by truck with no restrictions it was still slow going
as It was nothing but buggy wheel marks in the soft gravel, as it was early Spring
after a heavy freeze and the road was heaved in places making it muddy and
loose. I didn’t want to get stuck as I was needed on the job site and also
didn’t want to tear the road up for the Amish. I never knew what was over the next hill as the
road was narrow and barely wide enough for the truck. I just took my time and
figured the road would intersect another hard road and then I could get back to
where I needed to be.
Finally I came up
to an intersection and I looked to the left and saw a sign, but it had its back
to me so I couldn’t read it and there was a street sign and a road to the
right. I turned right onto a wide paved street and grabbed a gear and sighed,
glad that was over as it was tense driving to avoid getting stuck or tear
things up. I needed to catch up for time lost so I started pushing the truck
harder and was getting gears and picking up speed fast and I topped this little
rise in the road and there was another warning sign on the right with a sharp
left hand turn, and I could see the turn and they were not shitting a bit but I
was as I was going way to fast to make that turn and there was a drop off of
about six feet into a field on the other side of the turn. This truck with the
winch on back was top heavy meaning if I tried to take the turn I would have
rolled the truck. If I drive straight off the turn and land in the fields I
stand a better chance of keeping the truck on its feet. Also I’m sure I stand a
hell of a lot better chance of not getting hurt.
I only had about
50 feet to brake as hard as I could decision or not, thinking any reduction in
speed from the 45 I was going when I first saw the curve would be better. I really
had no choice but to go straight over the bank with the truck. The truck
started to fishtail a bit in the rear and slide sideways and I just let up on
the brakes and braced myself for what was a surreal moment in my life as I
launched a 23 ton truck into the air, it traveled through the air I’m sure for
a whole second until gravity and Mr. Newton’s laws took effect and reminded me
why I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry. As one friend of mine old Claude
mentioned to me afterwards and stuck in my memory as he said, ‘That oil has
been down there for millions of years and he says no matter what any boss says
, a few more minutes isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference.’ He was right;
they still ended up with their oil well done anyhow.
Well 23 tons in flight
as the truck must have been a site to behold as it was weightless as a feather
flying through the air the 50 or 60 feet it flew in a horizontal path straight
off the road but believe me when it hit it felt like 50 tons coming down as I
looked at the rear end mushroom the mud out of the ground, out in a fresh sown wheat
field with green stubble coming up in nice little three inch shoots. Mud and
tools were flying everywhere as anything loose in the back of truck quickly
exited the truck and scattered through the fields. Everything in the cab of the
truck including the bed of the sleeper and dust long forgotten in crooks and crannies
throughout the inside of the cab came rushing forward as I was caught in tsunami
of trash I never knew I harbored inside that cab. The air was thick with dust
so bad i could taste it and when i tried to see where I was going as obviously
I was still rolling, but I could barely see out the window. I hit the brakes
again and shoved in the clutch and started to roll down my window to let some
fresh air in and dust out, as a brown cloud escaped through the window and
things began to settle down and the truck had stopped rolling. I myself besides bouncing around was held firm
in my seat, by my seatbelt, and I had ducked down at the last minute, when I
felt I was going to hit avoiding smashing my head against the ceiling, still it
was a jolt to my body. I looked out the side window and into the rearview
mirror and the truck was still standing upright, and still had axles and
otherwise looked ok from what I could see.
I shoved the
mattress back in place and readjusted things in the cab and stared in wonder at
dirty magazines suddenly revealed, left by another operator buried in a nook
someplace undoubtedly. As I stared at a
picture of a nude lady who undoubtedly looked great I began to feel the
absurdity of all that had just happened to me in the last minute or two and
began to realize how truly lucky I was . Especially after looking back up the
hill at the road of which I was at least a couple hundred yards from in a now
muddy field of wheat. Two huge ruts starting 50 feet from the road’s edge, and
mushroomed up in the air where the rear wheels landed in the soft ground and actually
eased my landing and compared to what may have happened if I had tried to go
round the corner. My speed would have
been too high to make it and I would have rolled with a lot worse consequences.
Tools and boots and whatever scattered the mushroomed area where the truck landed
and I jumped out of the cab and looked around to see what damage I had done. Outside
of tearing up this farmers wheat field very little damage could be seen or was
ever found when I returned to the shop later on as we checked the truck more
thoroughly. The truck was ok and I gathered everything up in a hurry and threw
it on the truck as the engineer obviously had no idea where in the heck I was
or that I had wrecked.
I was pretty
experienced at driving in the mud by this point from being a farmer and working
in the oilfields and know sometimes when to go and when to stay. I put the
truck in gear after I was back in and tried to go in reverse first, as the
tires had a pile of mud in front of them from trying to stop. And it moved a
couple of feet. I tried going forward in
a gear I normally used off road with a lower auxiliary gear and a higher
forward gear giving me more torque and speed, the truck was rolling through the
piles and I was able to turn it and head for an opening to the road about 100
yards downs from the turn where the road grade and field grade met, making it
easier to get the truck back on the paved road. As much mud as I was turning up
I felt I would be lucky to get back on the road without getting stuck. Instead
I made it despite my fears and soon I was cleaning my tires debating what to do
about the farmer’s field. It was a mess, especially with what looked like two
big furrows or swaths of mud arching down into the field and coming back up on
the road. I had no other person involved in my little accident, and I was
needed on a job site and would have to take the truck to call anyhow so I
decided to just go on to the well I was supposed to. There was no one around
that saw anything or was there when I left. I lucked out or so I thought.
I get to the
jobsite and me and the engineer, as I called him, Beam Me Up Scotty, we started
checking out the truck and all the tools as we went ahead and did the testing
we were supposed to. In my haste of gathering things up I somehow had misplaced
my boot back at the place I had wrecked , I was forced to wear tennis shoes in
the mud or a smaller pair of boots I could just barely fit my big feet into . I
made it through the job with the boots, and never was so glad to get those
things off that I decided to go back and retrieve my other boot from the wreck
site after we finished the job. My engineer chooses to go on to the shop and
prepare them to the fact I had almost wrecked the truck while I returned to the
scene of the crime. Little had changed since the few hours I was gone and still
no one was around. I hurriedly went into the field and where the truck had come
down and mushroomed up the soil it had completely buried my boot hidden by obscurity
to me, when I was looking for lost items off the truck before. This time I
could pick it out, and like an archaeologist uncovering a major find I
hurriedly snatched the half full boot of mud up in my arms and headed for the
road. When I hear a, ‘Hey you’, real loud.
I look across a
field opposite of where I had parked the truck on the road before the sharp
turn and there was this man running across the field waving his arms telling me
to stop. I assured him I wasn’t going anywhere and he slowed to a hard
breathing walk as he stretched his old limbs out in a stride he had done before.
As he came closer his chore coat and bib overalls told me that this might be
the owner of the field of wheat I had destroyed earlier. I said Hi and he asked
if I was the one who tore up his field and I assured him I was, and that our
company would pay damages. I explained I
was driving too fast and didn’t realize that corner was there till it was too
late. He asked why I had left and I told him I was needed on a job, and that I
had full intentions of returning and seeing if I could find the owner, and we
exchanged information and I climbed back in the truck. The farmer was pissed
but was compensated for his loss even though he never resown the field, but he
was able to get his fertilizer and seed money back.
From that point
I took the truck on around the sharp corner in the opposite direction from
where I had went off the road. Four black tire marks on the pavement shooting
straight off into the field let everyone else be warned of the consequence of not
making the turn. I was puzzled when the farmer asked me if I didn’t see the warning
sign for the corner on back up the road. I asked him again if he meant the one
at the turn, he said no there was another one on up there. If there was I totally
missed it and I was determined to see if I was seeing things or not. And when I
retraced my steps and returned to the Amish buggy path, I noticed that sign
with its back to me on the left as I had
turned on to the paved road to the right. So I went further past the buggy
drive to see what was on that sign and sure enough, it was a sign warning me of
the sharp right hand turn. It was placed in the wrong place on the road. I
guess they assumed mostly buggies would use that one road, so they placed the
sign before the road as it would stand out clearer.
I was called in
on the carpet and lectured about how to slow down and take things easier all
the while they knew it was their own wish and desire for me to go as fast as I
can so they have to pay me less. Regardless of whether it was my fault or not,
or that there may have been extenuating problems that I encountered, I was
slapped on the back of the wrist and told not to do that I again. Like I would drive
23 ton truck off the road in flying leaps just for the hell of it, well maybe I
would. For a moment we were both free, the truck and I as we were soaring
through the air and until the hard reality of gravity sank home and spoiled my
little blue flying Scumburger truck.
No comments:
Post a Comment