Stuck trucks

Grover owns Polar Bear Towing, and he’s been pulling big rigs out of the Notch for a dozen years. His most recent trip was just two weeks ago.

According to Grover, on Nov. 4, a truck driver pulled over at Barnes Camp. Right in front of him was the last of the many signs prohibiting tractor-trailer trucks in the Notch — an electronic sign flashing orange LED lights.

“He pulled in there, and called and talked to his boss, who was in Oklahoma or somewhere,” Grover said. “They looked at a map on their end, and said, ‘Nope, keep on going.’”

Grover to the rescue, again.

Just has he’d done in September, and just like several other extrications he performed in the past 12 years.

Usually when a truck gets stuck in the Notch, it takes a wrecker about three hours to get the truck backed down the hill, Grover said. Sometimes the drivers aren’t very good at driving in reverse, and the tow truck operator has to drag them to and fro a bit to get them aligned correctly.

“Believe it or not, even though they have (commercial driver’s licenses), they still can’t back up,” Grover said. “The running joke is they can only drive one direction: forward.”

Not paying attention

For many truck drivers who get stuck in the Notch, what’s in question is not just their driving skills, but their common sense. Such as: Why didn’t they heed all the signs on Route 108 that tell truckers their big rigs aren’t allowed in the Notch?

According to Ernie Patnoe, the Vermont Agency of Transportation maintenance manager for this region, on each side of the Notch are four signs that notify truckers, “You can’t make it.” And then there’s the message board by Barnes Camp that flashes its message with LEDs.

“Yup, the big, ugly orange one,” Patnoe said. “Six feet high, 10 feet long.”

Most drivers who get stuck in the Notch are coming from the north, the Cambridge side, Patnoe said. But regardless of direction, the main culprit seems to be the GPS units some truckers are using. Google Maps, Garmin, TomTom and the like, meant for passenger vehicles, don’t always have Route 108 flagged for trucks, and the state doesn’t want to scare tourists away from one of the most scenic drives in New England.

Patnoe said there are trucker-specific GPS units that warn big rig drivers where not to go, but “the $99 special isn’t going to tell you that.”

The state has toyed with implementing technology already in use on interstate highways, said Capt. William Elovirta, safety chief and director of the enforcement division of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles.

Drivewyz is an app for smartphones and truck navigation systems that allows certain trucks to bypass weigh stations if they are up to spec and have good driving records. It does this by placing a virtual “fence” around the stations; good trucks pass through that fence and are given a green light to proceed, while drivers or trucks with less clean records are given a red light and told to exit.

Maybe an app like that could be programmed to place a similar fence around the Notch, Elovirta said.

Still, nothing beats plain old paying attention, such as reading road signs.

“I think that people have become so reliant on technology that they don’t pay attention when they’re driving,” he said. “I’ve been at DMV for 18 years, and really only in the last couple years has it been an issue.”

Expensive situation

Vermont State Police doesn’t have a call code for “truck stuck in the Notch,” so records for the number of incidents is incomplete.

For instance, police don’t always count the times a truck gets stuck, but gets out of the pickle before crews or cops arrive.

Still, Vermont State Police Capt. Paul White has put together some pretty comprehensive data from the past six years (see box, above).

According to White’s count, four trucks got stuck in the Notch this year. There was one other report, but that driver managed to get himself out before crews showed up.

The busiest year was 2013, when 10 trucks were reported, and the least busy was 2010, when only two trucks attempted the cross and failed.

The earliest extrication was May 22, 2013, and the latest in the calendar was Nov. 4 of this year.

That was the Arizona driver who sat right in front of a sign that said “No Tractor-Trailers” and called someone Oklahoma, who told him it was OK.

Other memorable ones include a Quebec driver who last year was hauling 99,000 pounds of sand from the Cambridge side, headed for the Stowe Country Club. He got his truck hung up on the boulders so badly that a crew had to first offload the sand, and then cut the axles right off the truck.

And there’s the driver who, in September of this year, was hauling a truck full of toys up and over the Notch from Canada. According to Elovirta, that driver had had his truck driver’s license for only a week.

Those drivers were issued tickets for ignoring the signs, which Elovirta said usually comes with a $162 penalty. That’s about as hard as law enforcement can slap drivers on the wrist, but it isn’t necessarily a drop in the bucket. Moving violations can be considered a major offense for a trucker; get two of them and you lose your CDL.

Plus, heavy wreckers don’t come cheap. Grover didn’t say how much he charges to yank a big rig out of the notch, but it’s much more than he’d charge a normal car.

And Elovirta said that, in Chittenden County, where he lives, “just to have the wrecker leave the yard could be five figures.”

Making it through

Although it isn’t recommended, some long vehicles have been known to make it up and over the Notch without much trouble. Elovirta said the maximum length allowed in the Notch for a straight vehicle — two axles only — is 46 feet.

Patnoe, who grew up in Morristown, remembers riding the school bus on field trips up to the upper parking area, coming from the Stowe side. And Grover’s wrecker is 38 feet long and he can make it through the Notch with little trouble. Of course, the locals tend to know the road much better.

Just this week, Stowe resident Lyndall Heyer followed a truck towing one-half of a modular home up and over. She followed the truck out of curiosity and watched the driver navigate skillfully all the way.

“I was impressed,” she wrote in an email Tuesday. “Lots of tree branches down and he scraped a few rocks, but he made it cleanly.”