So, my wife orders pizza for dinner last night since I wouldn't be home until later in the night - or so I thought.

now, ordering pizza for delivery is a new thing for us, as in the 3 years we've been in this house, no places would deliver to us. this one place just started delivering last week, and now I don't know fi they'll ever come back!

I get a call at 5:00 from her saying the pizza delivery guy is stuck in our driveway as he can't get up the hill from the ice and snow. the wife and I both have 4 wheel drive, so as long as the snow isn't too deep, I don't even both clearing it most times - and I'm certainly not going to put frame-rot - I mean, salt - down. well, this guy's little Nissan sentra had no chance of making it up the hill and you think he would have noticed that before he drove the 200 yards down the hill.

by the time I get home, he had slid backwards and sideways so that he was wedged between a big rock and a tree. my wife had given him a snow shovel though I'm not sure if he was planning to shovel the whole driveway or what?

I was thinking he would have made it part way up and driveway and I could have used the winch to pull him up the rest of the way, but he actually made negative progress and slid down the lower portion of the driveway past the house toward the barn.

so, I hook a tow strap up to his frame hook underneath, and to my drawbar, put it in 4 wheel low and tell him to steer as I pull him up. my wheels slipped a bit on the ice, but driving off in the fresh snow I had no problem pulling him up.

I just wish I had gotten some pictures!

 

Haha thats pretty funny. I had a buddy that was out off roading this past august call me at 11pm that he was stuck and i was the only person witha big enough truck that he knew that was still up and about. When i got there (hes got a '95 F250 PSD) sunk up to the bumper. Hes got bigger tires on it I forget what size, but he was sunk. I used my 2"thick rope and 4wd low and yanked him out.

 

That's a good one JP. It sounds like my mom and dad's lane. It's about 900 feet long and goes down a pretty good sized hill to get to their house, it probably drops a good 60 feet in that distance. Soon after they built there the neighbor to the West built a nice new wooden fence all the way around his pasture for his horses. It acts as a very effective snow fence so their lane is always covered in snow. If the wind is out of the West, which it almost always is out there, it's not unusual for them to have 18" of snow in their driveway, and I have seen it a lot deeper than that. Mom and dad both have 4x4 (or all-wheel drive) vehicles so dad rarely spends the money to have it plowed, since it only takes a little while before it drifts shut again. I've been trying for years to convince him to get a plow setup for his truck, but at this point I think he enjoys the challenge.

More times than I can count, I have used my trucks to drag someone out of that driveway. I pulled my brother out a few years ago and was actually pushing snow with the bumper of his car on the way up the hill. Who knew a Mitsubishi Lancer would make such a great snowplow!

 

ha! yes, it does sound pretty similar. I haven't seen 18 inches of snow on the driveway yet, but it looks like we're heading there this year. We did spend the first 18 hours of living in the house when we moved in with a moving truck parked halfway up the driveway. there was a big snowstorm the day before we moved in and the moving truck couldn't make it up the driveway at the end of the day. so they just left it there overnight and came back with a 4x4 the next day to pull it out - I didn't have a big truck back then :-)

as for plowing your parent's driveway - tell them to get a tractor with a blower on it. My first PSD came with a plow on it, but I didn't even bother using it as the trees and embankments that surround my driveway wouldn't allow me to push more than a few inches of snow out of the way anyway. plus I didn't want the neighbors and owner at work asking me to plow for them all the time. so, I sold the plow setup and put the money towards a semi-DIY blower setup on my tractor (which is diesel, of course). it makes quick work of any snow and throws it up and far enough to get over the embankments. plus its great fun and doesn't beat up the truck!

that's funny about the lancer/snowplow though!

 

That's a good idea about the blower JP. I doubt dad will go for it, but it's still a good idea.

 

I bought an old tractor-mount blower for $100 on craigslist and made up a custom transmission to hook it to the front PTO (i.e. throw-out-controlled crank pulley) on my tractor. its loud as heck, but works like a charm!

(please ask me to post some pictures :-) )

 

OK, post some pictures! LOL

 

darn! I thought I had some on this computer. guess it'll have to wait.

thanks for the request, though, Glenn :-)

 

Pics or it didn't happen JP...

 

haha - oh, I know!

what about a CAD drawing file I used to work out the geometry on the transmission? I guess that just proves only that I thought about it, but never actually put it into practice :-)

 

That would have been the least he could have done after blocking your driveway and delaying your dinner like that!

 

ha! good point! yeah, I'm pretty sure he was angling for an extra tip by the time I pulled him out. he's lucky I didn't charge him for the tow.

 

Pizza delivery required vehicles:
'90s - old Chevette
'00s - old CRX
'10s - old Sentra, evidently

We're on a residential street with not many driveways, and a LOT of street parking. During snow emergencies, parking is allowed on only one side, alternating days, so they can plow to (or close to) the curb on the other side. They still plow both directions, though, so the cars parked on the legal side get a nice ridge to climb out of. College kids / townies usu. have some little zit-car with no ground clearance though. One blizzard last winter we got the option to work from home. I ended up playing hooky and going out a snatching a few little Hondas and what-nots out from their curbside burials.

Only reason I shovel our driveway apron is because it's shared with the neighbors, who are shut-ins, so their caretakers can get in/out.

 

I have a road a block away from me in town that doesn't get plowed in the winter. It's not a matter of if, but when, some teenager is knocking on my door to come and pull them out. I hop in my 76 and go get it done. Last year some kid tried to go down the road with his car. Then they got a pickup stuck trying to pull him out. So I had to pull them both out.

Bad thing is I was pretty much that stupid when I was a teenager too...

 

I just finished up my frist semester at WVU and lot of kids that go there are from the lower states that dont get that much snow, so they dont have the understanding of small car plus lots of snow means you get stuck. so ive pulled out prolly 8 people since ive been at school.