Here is a little story. We were traveling in the Motor Home towing a Jeep on I-35 south, north of Waco, Tx. I seen this piece of plastic on the road and I was running about 60-65 and could not move over into the left lane due to heavy traffic, so I just straddled the plastic and kept going. I looked in the rear view mirror and did not see the plastic. So I thought maybe it blew up on the front of the Jeep. But when we got to College Station, Our grand son said he thought my spare tire cover had blown off the Jeep and was dragging the ground.So I went to check and it was that plastic, it had wound it's self around the front differential of the Jeep and it was not just a piece of Plastic, but a big plastic sack of chicken guts. I mean it was a mess.Took me about 2 hours to cut it off there. I have chicken grease covering the complete undercarriage up all over the engine. I tried a pressure washer, no help, so I guess I need to find a place to get it steam cleaned. So the next time you see some thing in the road way think twice before running over it, I know I will.

You did the right thing by not trying to avoid the debris when it would have endangered someone else. I just hope your jeep does not smell like a KFC on wheels:)

FWIW - consider yourself lucky!!I am on the freeway in Houston (regarded as the city with the worst drivers) at speed with the traffic in the middle lane (my usual lane to avoid the fast driver to my left and non-looking merging drivers on the right).Suddenly, the small car I was following made an abrupt shift to the right - cutting off the car that was alongside of me.It was then that I saw the 2 foot long piece of 6 inch 'C' channel iron!! I had no way to miss the thing - there was other traffic on both sides, moving at about 55!! Yep, it ruptured my right front tire. Fortunately, I had installed a 'Steer-safe' and eaily maintained control until I could move to the right and then to the shoulder. I carry a mounted spare (22.5 - I cannot lift it!!) but the Good Sam guy easily removed the blown tire and mounted my spare. I asked him about obtaining a replacement and he advised there was a good dealer about 3 exits further along - where I replaced the spare. Repair to the compartment behind the tire was actually a rebuild of it and the steel bent the steps so bad (they were in the retracted position) they too had to be replaced.

Go for a drive through the lovely TX countryside. The grease on the engine will burn off soon. As for the rest of it - think of it as a free lube job ;)

Yep. Burn off the chicken, and smack a deer. That's the Texas way.

Debris on road way | Good Sam Community

36 Replies

murphysranch
Explorer
May 28, 2014
Ugh to some of the horrific stories above. Years ago, on a SF Bay Area bridge, a piece of re-bar fell off a truck, and it came up thru the bottom of a car a woman was driving. Her 2 kids were in the back. The car finally came to a rest on the bridge, and the paramedics couldn't get her out of the car to work on her. Seems the re-bar punctured the car and went straight up inside of her. Such a tragic death.
Hammerhead
Explorer
May 28, 2014
Last summer I was merging onto a very busy freeway (not pulling our camper) where there is little room between cars. I was following closer than I like to just to get out of the exit-only lane and there was 6-foot aluminum ladder in the lane. I ran over it with the passenger side tires and didn't see any damage. There was a big dip where the end of the previous night's asphalt pour ended and the owner of the ladder was on the side of the road just ahead on the side of the road. I guess he didn't have his load secured very well.
Kittykath
Explorer II
May 28, 2014
Never trust a couple of tails pointing in your direction from a horse trailer. So much for the new car smell.
PRodacy
Explorer
May 28, 2014
Similar to the chicken guts, but maybe worse - I once got a piece of barbed wire wrapped around my drive shaft. I'm not sure how long the piece was, but by the time I got stopped, the wrapping was about 8 inches around and cofvered at least 3 feet of the shaft. Took hours to cut it off (in very tiny pieces, accompanied by quite a bit of blood).

My sister was following a truck that had a bunch of furniture on it,and a couch fell off right in front of her. She ran completely over it with no damage to her vehicle, but the couch didn't look very good. I guess it pays to drive a larger, higher clearance vehicle. A Smart car would have probably been totaled, but the couch would have survived.
Thunder_Mountai
Explorer II
May 22, 2014
This story isn't RV related but it is chicken related. Beginning in 1967 I beat I30 between Dallas and Commerce where I went to college. It was common to see flatbed semis loaded with crates of chickens. There were always feathers along the road.

I think this incident happened about 1968. I was coming home on Friday and topped a hill near Rockwall. A semi load of chicken had dumped about half of its load in the middle of the highway and another semi or two had ploughed into the crates. This must have happened just minutes before I drove through the carnage. There were dead chickens everywhere. There were chickens flopping around in the process of dying and live chickens running back and forth across the road.

I couldn't avoid running through the mess. When I got home there was chicken blood and feathers stuck in the grill. For weeks you could drive past where the accident happened and there were chicken feather caught in the vegetation along the road.
FunnyCamper
Explorer II
May 22, 2014
YUK. that is sure nasty.

driving home from a horse ride my friend and I (pulling our monster 4 horse trailer) slammed into a plastic kiddie pool with a metal ladder attached.

it flew off the truck in the oncoming lane, our eyeballs got seriously wide seeing this thing fly off and literally right in front of us, we had absolutely no choice but to hit it. luckily nothing happened but we discingrated that sucker :) we figured the horses wondered what the heck we hit with the noise of it all.

insane things happen.
Gonzo42
Explorer
May 22, 2014
1. I had one of those plastic bags wrap itself around a U-joint. It took me about 2 hours to carve it off.

2. Shortly after the 605 Fwy opened I was using it to get to work on my motorcycle. At one point I noticed a truck with several flattened cars seemingly headed for a recycling of some sort, but one had a hood flapping in the wind.

I immediately moved two lanes over. A short time later I saw that hood in the lane I had been using, but it was in the shadow of a bridge, mostly out of sight.

God is watching us. The least we can do is be entertaining.
lakeside013104
Explorer
May 22, 2014
Dark rainy night with really a black hot top road surface, going 62 mph on I-95. The auto in front swerves severely to the left lane leaving an 800# to 1000# bull moose standing dead center of my lane looking directly at my TV/5er. I switched off the lights, hit the horn and steered directly for where I last saw his hind quarters. With the lights off I suppose he could see where he needed to go without being blinded by bright lights. Lucky for us, he moved two steps forward and out of our path. Very thankful we made no contact with that big boy.

Lakeside

This is a picture of one of his relatives:
Nolan
Explorer
May 21, 2014
The only thing I have been trying to miss is all the potholes.
Dave_E
Explorer
May 19, 2014
I was going west through Birmingham AL. with a trailer and noticed a fairly new ford ranger off to the right of the highway in a weird angle and the center of the roof down on the dash and a couple of guys looking up to the sky possibly for a airplane and a tire about a hundred feet or so away. At that time I remembered an old wrecker sitting about a half mile back on the other side of the Interstate with an old big car on the hook and only one tire on the ground. Guess where that tire ended up, luckily it hit dead center, it didn't look like any was hurt and I don't think they saw any airplane with a tire missing :B

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Debris on road way

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