In 2005 I saw a Schneider doing something almost equally as stupid. There was NO WAY I could help him, since his right side drive tires were off the ground. He needed a wrecker. But I was just trying to convince the dummy to tell the truth to Schneider, to maybe increase his chances of not getting FIRED. I gave up when he decided to insult
my intelligence by repeatedly telling me that his trailer slid sideways all by itself. I told him I'm not his boss, I'm not the wrecker driver, and I'm not a cop. He didn't have to lie to me. I'd already told him I had been driving 18 wheelers the same size as his for over a year by that point & knew it was impossible to do what he had attempted.
I'm gonna have to fire up Google Earth in a minute to get the 2nd screenshot because they've been doing construction and the location of this guy's incident no longer exists, .. but Google Earth lets you scroll back to historical imagery.
The first mistake the guy made, while trying to leave the Target parking lot on the left side of the pic above, (Target is the building with the white roof, on the upper left side of the image) was missing a HUGE sign that explains that the road on his right was NOT the exit to Rt. 50, but a frontage road with a dead end. That divided boulevard-type driveway labeled "Ken Hayes Dr", connecting with Rt. 50 is the only way in or out of that parking lot. That frontage road used to dead-end right before I-57's older (still visible) entrance ramp. There was a light-bulb shaped turnaround but it had a small radius & was only for cars. In the center was a swamp, and the swamp was about 3-4 feet below grade. It wasn't a big paved area, it was a loop.
Ok here's some historical imagery from 2010 that shows it before they ripped it up to improve that interchange with I-57.
I panned around at the same zoom level until I found an 18 wheeler to screenshot & cut out to place on the loop to show the correct scale.
Well he dragged his trailer into the swamp in the middle, and the trailer would have rolled over had the tractor not been cut about 45 degrees to the left. (he tried going around counter-clockwise). ONLY because of the angle the tractor & trailer were articulated, it didn't roll over. His right side drive tires were about 6 inches off the ground. It was leaning so bad, that if you were to take a knife & slash his left steer tire, the whole rig would've rolled over into the swamp.
Now get this... the trailer made deep tracks in the mud as he pulled it into the swamp in the middle. I ... COULD ... PLAINLY .... SEE .. THE ..PATH ... HIS ...TRAILER...TIRES ... FOLLOWED. But he repeatedly told me, .. even while were standing there looking at the tracks, ... a set of semi-trailer tire tracks that STOPPED right where his trailer tires were, ... were older tracks from somebody else, and his trailer had been just fine up on the pavement until it decided to simply slide sideways into the swamp, even though I was making footprints with my FEET in the same mud, and there were no tracks at all following the path he claims his trailer tires followed when his trailer "slid sideways".
He actually told me that to my face.
I was in my little Ford Ranger and spotted his predicament from Rt. 50 and stopped to see if I could help.
To this day I've never met anybody quite as stupid. The guy was kinda short, maybe 5'9", 120 lbs, scrawny as hell, looked like he was in his mid to late 30's. Had a southern accent. White guy. And he also had this idea in his head that "Schneider Emergency Maintenance" was going to come riding in on a unicorn & save the day & he'd be on his way to go deliver his load of weed whackers to the Sears warehouse in Manteno, 10 miles up the road. He refused to believe that the only way he was going to get out of there was for at least two wreckers to park on the I-57 entrance ramp & run winch cables down there to drag his trailer out of the swamp. The entrance ramp went uphill, BTW. There was nothing between the south edge of that loop and the I-57 northbound ramp except a steep hill.
I left. I didn't wait for the wreckers or "Schneider Emergency Maintenance" to get there, even though it would've been cool to see a real life unicorn..