7 The run-away eight tonner truck.
(7) The run-away eight tonner truck.
It was an IH lorry (imported into South Africa from Australia; it looked, and was shaped, like a military vehicle}. Without a load on it weighed in the region of five to six metric ton.
The driver was a rather old man who never had a real school education. His father was married to three wives and he as the eldest child had to stay at home and herd cattle. Then he heard a missionary preach and sensed in himself that the words were for him; he responded positively. There-after, over some years, the missionaries taught him to begin and to end every day with prayer; also always to pray before doing anything. On the day when something more than unusual happened he had been sent to town to fetch a load of maize meal from the mill, for the farms’ trading store. When he arrived back at the farm it was time for midday break and the workers who were to offload the load were just going off to lunch; so he parked the lorry with the load on, leaving it in first gear with the handbrake on; and also went for lunch. When he returned after an hour, to attend to the offloading, the farmer who was also a missionary was standing on the farmhouse veranda looking on and everything went smoothly; the lorry was still standing on the incline where he stopped it before offloading. Although he had no formal education, he was a faithful man and had a good record for safe driving.
Allow me to just explain the lay of the land. The truck/lorry and driver had come down a two km downhill, then over a bridge and ten meters after the bridge the road turned fairly sharply (about 70 degrees to his right hand and immediately began a +- 100 meter fairly steep uphill. Halfway up this steep incline was a gate with a motor grid (so that cattle cannot come into the yard, while cars and small vans can use it so that they do not need to open the gate. This grid was narrow and had a thick (nearly a meter wide) hard stone wall of about five feet high on the one side and a sturdy steel pole; made out of a cut off railway track/line; on the other (the gate) side.
A few weeks before this incident a missionary who lived in a town had visited on the farm. He stood with the farmer/missionary on the same veranda and observed the same lorry with the same driver, as he was removing it from there. He noticed the driver take the steering with both hands, bow his head and his lips moved (he was praying before starting the lorry). The observer remarked jokingly to the farmer: “Your lorry must have very poor brakes that he prays so long” In fact the brakes were normally good, both the handbrake and the service/foot brake.
On the fateful day a stone or other object had damaged the air-pressure tank or pipe and the air pressure that assists the foot brakes, leaked out over lunch. The driver disengaged the gear to neutral, to start the engine. He then made the mistake of intending to use the foot-brake while putting it back into first; In other words, he released the handbrake too soon. The foot-brake pedal went right down to the floorboard. Before he could figure out what had, or was, happening, the lorry began running backwards, faster and faster. Here I need to admit that the driver’s co-ordination was not the best, but we all understood, he grew up herding cattle and was over 50 years old when he learnt to drive.
When the truck began its backward roll the driver got such a fright that he just kept looking straight ahead; holding the steering in a vice-like grip. It has been explained that the grid gate was next to the main gate halfway up the fairly steep incline. It is difficult to put in words all that happened next. As the steering was held in such a grip with the drivers feet probably almost bending the floorboard with the flat brake and staring straight at the receding (for him) landscape ahead. It gained unpleasant speed and noise (rattling jumping). The right side wheels were leaving the road as the runaway was not heading straight to the gate, but next to it; which was toward the grid-gate.
Allow me to repeat; no lorry had ever tried to get through there, it was just too narrow and not constructed for such a big vehicle; I never thought it could fit through. That day it did fit through, so exactly; speeding in reverse. All that happened was that the railway-track pole scratched a line along the load-body (back of the lorry) from end to beginning. Here I must just explain again that the stone wall was sturdy and would undoubtedly have overturned the vehicle; nor would it have been a nice sight to see a lorry at loggerheads with a railway-track pole. What without doubt could not have been done by a genius racing driver, was that day accomplished by an old man looking the opposite way to where the vehicle was travelling.
Now back to the bridge. Below it was a flat level stone area for about 12 meters and then a waterfall of circa two meters high. Not long before this incident the farmer had cut down a tall gum tree (eucalyptus) on the yard; a section of which he towed with a tractor down to the stream, to get it out of the way. With some crowbars he and some workers rolled it off the flat level stone area and It ended up lying suspended across the stream about a meter below the waterfall and at about the same level as the stone ledge.
As the runaway truck came at speed; having gone in a straight line so far; the driver must have slightly altered the position of the steering wheel. It veered slightly to his left; crossed the road and headed for the waterfall. As trucks usually have, it had double wheels (20 inch x 10”) at the back. It cannot be explained, but that day those back wheels (left hand) went perfectly for that long pole which lay across the stream and raced over. On the other side it hit a soft earth bank, of about half a meter high; which acted as an emergency brake, and with soft earth flying, it stopped the runaway. It now stood with the left-hand rear wheels beyond the stream and the front l/h wheel at the beginning of the log.
To the mind; the natural thing to happen would have been that it lands upside-down in the stream below the waterfall.
The only damage was a broken center-bolt; the bolt that keeps the axle on the center of the spring. It was quite a job to jack up the lorry and to move it a few inches at a time, to get all four wheels back onto the level stone ledge above the waterfall. The driver and the lorry were saved by that one (length of) tree, obviously arranged to be there by no one else than God.
Anyone who witnesses two such miracles happening within a few seconds would be a fool not to admit that a very high Hand had it all in control.
Apart from that; it is safer to believe in God and in all that He Is than to let anger nourish doubt within you (also very much better to pray too long than not at all).