Outside the world of commercial trucks, a one-ton Ram 3500 Crew Cab dually is about as big as one can get. To make that live for you, we’re talking about a four-door truck with an eight-foot bed, riding on a 14-foot wheelbase. It’s nearly 22 feet long – apparently a bit too long for the driver of this truck to successfully navigate an intersection. It’s not every day you see the backside of a big dually perched several feet into the air.
It’s certainly a dramatic scene, as captured in this video from Towtruck_Dustin on YouTube. For the record, there are no reports of injuries resulting from this slight error in judgment. Moreover, we see the Ram drive away under its own power once all is said and done. So if there is damage to the undercarriage, it’s apparently not severe.
That’s certainly due in part to the recovery effort by this tow truck operator. At a glance, one would think a simple winch straight backward would do the trick. However, that could lead to added damage on the passenger side of the truck, which is stuck down in the ditch as much as the driver-side rear is up. Instead, some extra gear is called into play that pulls the back of the truck down while also tugging rearward. This brings the front up and out of the ditch without dragging anything on the truck, while also taking care not to snag the drainage culvert in the ditch.
The whole operation takes approximately 15 minutes, using just one tow cable. Once upright, the Ram driver gently backs away from the ditch and all is well. It’s called an easy recovery, but one doesn’t simply walk up to an 8,000-pound, 22-foot truck on the edge of a rollover and snap it back into place. We suspect there’s quite a bit of experience from the tow truck operator to pull this off (pun totally intended) without causing further damage.
