Your True
Tales
June 2003 –
Page 22
The Truck
That Drove Itself
by Brad
I dabble in several things and will do almost anything to make money providing it is legal and above board. Usually, this leads me to being involved in "business deals" of many kinds. In the summer of 1993 I made a deal on a truckload of frozen shrimp from a food distributor who had to go out of business in New Mexico. I had to rent a refer truck to go pick the shrimp up in and this truck was the size of a large Ryder rental truck. My truck was equipped with air conditioning and had a five-speed manual transmission.
I went and got the shrimp and was on my way home. I noticed that the truck seemed to be handling a little funny so, I pulled to the side of the road and got out the check things out. I noticed that the right front tire on the truck was going bad and it most likely would have blown before I would have gone two or three more miles. I got on the mobile CB radio I had with me and put out a call. A fellow came back to me and said he could jump off the interstate and swing down to pick me up and that it would take him about 15 minutes to get to me. He was a local rancher and just a nice guy, period. He arrived and I told him and showed him my problem and he said he could take me to the next town where the big tire shop was located some 40 miles away. We were in the middle of the desert where nobody lived for miles and miles in any direction. According to the kind rancher, the road we were on got very little use by any cars or trucks. He told me that if I would have had no phone or radio it would have been very likely that I could have sat there for two or three days with nobody even passing by. I said I understood but that with a load of shrimp like I had on the truck, I didn't really want to leave it out there unattended. He said for me to follow him and that within a half mile there was a place where I could take the truck off the road and it would be hidden from anyone's view. I agreed and he lead me to the spot. Then I said that with the heat on the desert and the refer needing the generator to help the refer motor plus to keep the cab of the truck from becoming so terribly hot, I was going to just put the gearshift in Neutral and set the choke for a little faster idle. I knew the truck had near two full tanks of gas and that on faster idle it most likely would not overheat the engine if we could get back within one to two hours and I wouldn't have to worry about my load of shrimp going bad. The rancher agreed and wee took off.
The truck was parked in this dried out river bed or wash and when you looked out the truck window you could see nothing but desert sand, scrub type plants and brush and rocks for what appeared to be endless miles ahead. We got to the town and the tire shop man said he could take his service truck and a new tire out to the truck and put the new tire on right there with his mobile changer and equipment. I thanked the good rancher and the tire man and I left for the desert. We got there and for a moment I thought my worst fears had come true. The truck was gone!
We drove down into the wash and the good thing about being in the desert if the wind isn't too bad is that you can track footsteps, animals and particularly, tire tracks. We just followed the tracks as they snaked their way through the desert making turns here and there and coming very close to big rock piles. We came to one point where there was a big dip and then right after the dip we noticed the tracks took a big turn then straightened back out again. We were moving at 25 miles an hour and we had gone about four and a half miles. We topped this small hill and about a mile or so way out in front of us we could see the dust being made by the truck as it went through the desert. I only had one set of keys for the truck so the door was unlocked and it could have been stolen easily by anybody. I told the tire man that it was my guess that some thief was going to meet someone out in the desert and steal at least part of the load, leave the truck and just disappear into thin air. He agreed that I was most likely correct. We got closer to the truck and he looked at me and said that if somebody was stealing a truck like this and would easily be able to notice that we were coming up on them and gaining on them, they would increase their speed to try and avoid getting caught. I had to agree with him. Then, just after we made those statements, the truck picked up speed and started a turn picking up even more speed. We now assumed we were correct about having a thief in that truck. We were now running about 45 mph and we got closer to the truck and we moved out of being directly behind the truck and we got well to the side of the trucks tracks so the dust didn't blind us. We could see the truck as clear as a bell and it looked like there was nobody in the cab. It began to slow down and it finally stopped but no brake lights came on. We circled it and drove up to where the tire truck was facing mine and we were about 25 yards away from it. The truck was just idling and at first I thought that someone must have jumped out of the truck. The problem with that is we would have seen anybody that jumped out very easily anywhere during the previous five minutes or so. Yet the truck turned, went faster, then slowed down and stopped with the engine idling.
I walked up to the truck and looked in the sand below both doors and there were no prints of any kind. I walked up and climbed on the step to look in. The truck was in neutral and just idling. The tire guy and I just looked at each other and I told him we have either been snookered by somebody real clever or that truck somehow got here on its own. He said, dude, I know we weren't snookered and I don't see how the damn truck got here on its own. The truck was sitting on a hardened and firm area and the tire guy said he would just do the changing right here. He moved his truck and was re-positioning it to get the back of his truck up toward the side of mine. We were drinking some cold water he had with him when all of a sudden. The engine of my truck began to rev up a bit and nobody was in it for sure. Suddenly we heard a clank noise from the transmission and the truck began to move. I said what the hell? I went and jumped on the truck step, grabbed the mirror and hung on. I looked in the cab and the gearshift was in the second gear position which was straight down from first gear in a normal five speed shift pattern. The truck picked up more speed and without the clutch moving I heard the transmission clank again and the gearshift moved up and to the right and into the third gear position. I was freaked out a bit and I looked back to see that the tire guy was following. The truck picked up more speed and again the clutch never moved, but the gearshift came straight down and dropped into fourth gear as we picked up more speed and we were right around 50mph. Then the engine seemed to drop rpm's and the gearshift popped up out of fourth gear into neutral. The truck slowed down and stopped. I hopped off and went over and got in the tire mans truck and I sat there and told him what happened. He said, I'm no mechanic but I've heard of engine idle rpm changes causing vehicles to pop into a gear because of something that happens with the transmission and then they can pop back out again. He said if I had to guess, I would say that the transmission on that truck is so well worn and may not be far from going out because a shift took place with nobody pushing the clutch in. This was spooky to say the least. We were sitting there talking and suddenly my truck took off again and he said you better go get it and I said just follow it. We followed it for eight miles in the desert and the truck made just enough turns that it never hit any rocks and at one point we got up to 62mph. The truck slowed down again and finally stopped. I got in it and pulled over to another hard pan area and shut it down. He changed the tire, I paid him and he asked me if I wanted him to follow me or anything. I said everything was fine and that I was going to write some things down in my little notebook. I knew how to get back to the main road so we said goodbye and he took off. Meanwhile, my truck cab was getting hot so with the truck in neutral, I turned the key and started it back up so the air conditioning would cool me down. I slid over to the passenger side and opened my notebook to start writing. The truck was idling, the air was cooling and I had been writing for a few minutes. All of a sudden the engine slowly began to rev again. There was the clank from the transmission and the gearshift popped into second gear and we were moving. The speed picked up with the engine rpm's and boom, another clank and the gearshift moved up into third gear. The truck began to turn wide and the speed picked up. Then came another clank and it dropped into fourth gear and we were cutting along at about 50mph. I really don't know why it didn't move up into 5th gear but it didn't. For more than ten minutes the truck was just driving itself along and it made several turns and it always just missed rocks or holes. I had not been paying real close attention to where we were headed because I was totally fascinated. After something like 15 or 20 minutes of fascination the truck began slowing up. The gearshift popped up out of fourth gear and into neutral and the truck coasted to a stop. I was thinking to myself that I had to get headed for home so I better get myself back to the highway. I looked around and realized I was less than a quarter of a mile from the highway. This damn truck had literally taken itself and then me on a long joyride and took me back to where I needed to be to get on the main highway. I just slid over behind the wheel and reached up and patted the dashboard as I shook my head. I dove on home and unloaded the truck at the freezer storage I rented and went home and told my wife the whole incredible story.
I went to take the truck back and when I arrived at the rental lot, I made up my mind I was going to buy that truck, which I did, because it was special. I guess you could say it had become my all time favorite toy.
Four years ago the transmission went out on the truck and I replaced it. The engine was still going strong but with the new transmission the truck never again would do its thing. So, I sold it.
Brad writes again with this follow-up:
There are a couple of other pieces of information that I realized I left out of the email I sent you about the truck.
Ever since I sold the truck I continued to wonder how such a thing could happen or be explained in some mechanical way. I was naturally full of caution when it came to discussing this issue with anybody and specifically, a mechanic. You see, where I live you could easily be put in a rubber room for talking about something like this.
In the time that has passed I have found four truck mechanics and a now retired design engineer who worked at General Motors for 42 years. Their individual opinions as to the possibility of my claim and the mechanical reasons for what more than likely happened are almost exactly the same in every case.
In my truck was a TOP KICK engine and at a couple of different times during the production of these engines, the auto maker ran into problems with the idling function on them. The engine would make a kind of snorkle noise which had to do with air mixing with the fuel and some kind of a blow back factor. This by itself would not have caused my problem.
I was asked by all these guys about my gearshift and whether or not it seemed to be real loose or tight. I told them loose. They asked me about my clutch and how it grabbed as you would let it out. Mine almost had to be completely depressed before you could move the gearshift and not hear any grinding noises. All of them agreed that I had a nearly worn out pressure plate and that my throwout bearing must have been past the worn out stage. I never did it back then but these guys told me that if I would have wanted to, I could have shifted gears without even using the clutch and I would have only heard a clank noise. The transmission would have also likely been very worn but still working.
They all agreed that the heavy vibration generated by the engine and affecting the crankshaft could have easily vibrated enough to cause the clutch system to engage and function due to the general condition of the system and the transmission. They all said that as the truck progressed in second gear to a certain rpm, this would cause the weak clutching mechanism to allow the transmission to naturally shift to the next gear. Then because of the lunging and snorkling of the engine this would aid in the increase of engine rpms even though the engine would really not have been working that hard. The popping out of fourth gear back to neutral, they said, was most likely just a vibration situation and then the truck would slow down until it finally stopped. The steering thing is no big deal and they all said that my wheel turning at various times was happening simply because of how the tires were affected by the sand or a small rock or an indentation of the ground. That explained it to me.
The retired GM designer said it was a dirty shame that I didn't think to video tape the truck doing its thing. He said that between GM, the company who supplied the clutch systems, the transmissions and today's reality TV, I could have made close to a half a million dollars selling copies of such a tape. I had to agree with him.
I just thought you should also have this information after the story because you may need it to keep a few people from thinking you're ready for a rubber room.
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