A truck driver from Texas was fortunate to walk away from a semi-tractor-trailer crash on the steep U.S. 14 switchbacks east of Lovell Tuesday that nearly pulled his truck over the edge of the mountain.
According to Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper Lanny Hensley, Otis Lott of Houston was driving a Peterbilt semi pulling a flatbed trailer down the steep 14A grade when his brakes overheated.
“He told Trooper Blain Mollett (who interviewed Lott at the hospital) that he lost air pressure, but in that case the brakes will set,” Hensley said. They didn’t set but got hot. It was probably brake fade.”
Hensley noted that the Lovell Volunteer Fire Dept., which responded to the crash, measured high temperatures in the brakes long after the crash.
The Peterbilt from J.H. Walker Trucking of Houston was pulling a flatbed trailer loaded with dense soda ash from Solvay Chemicals of Houston when, after gaining speed coming around a corner, the trailer began to slide sideways, tracked to the outside and tipped over, pulling the truck over and onto its top in a corkscrew fashion, Hensley said.
“The trailer rode up over the top and went over the Jersey barrier, pulling the truck against the barrier,” Hensley said. “It slid on its roof until it came to a stop.”
Lott was tended to at the scene by EMTs from North Big Horn Hospital and firemen, then transported to the hospital in Lovell where he was treated and released, Hensley said. He said a citation is unlikely.
“He was just inexperienced and on an unfamiliar road,” the trooper said. “He said he missed a turn someplace and was trying to come back this way.”
The crash was located 25 miles east of Lovell on the west face of the Big Horns and took place around 1:40 to 1:45 p.m. Tuesday.