The Ford F-150 pickup truck was parked behind the building at the corner of 20th and Chapline streets. It then coasted into Big Wheeling Creek.
Why? How?
“The owner of that white pickup truck really has no idea why it happened,” explained Don Atkinson, an employee of Ace Garage for the past 40 years. “He told us that about a week ago he went into the storage area in the building where Blue Cross/Blue Shield once was, and when he came back out his truck was gone.
“That truck rolled down that hillside and into the creek, and then it floated downstream for a bit before it stopped behind Straub’s body shop. Then someone from the body shop sent us a picture of it, and we went to take a look at it. Then yesterday, we went to the location, and the good folks with Braden’s Towing and firefighters from the Wheeling Fire Department joined us to lift that truck out of the there.”
The Removal
It was a complicated task.
First, a firefighter had to reach the vehicle. Then he had to break two of the truck’s windows in order to harness the Ford pickup.
The F-150 was then pulled to an area where it would be safe to retrieve it.
“After all of the calls were made, we came up with a plan, and everyone there executed it perfectly,” Atkinson reported. “The guys with the fire department’s swift water rescue team went into the creek to get the truck hooked up, and the first thing we had to do was pull it back upstream toward the bridge on Market Street, so we had a good place to put it. There were phone lines and cables near the bridge, too, so we had to be very careful.
“After we tied a cable off with one of the bigger trees in that area, we then ran that cable along the creek to where the truck was,” he explained. “That’s when the firefighter hooked up the truck, and we pulled it to the creek bank and then pulled it up to the north end of the bridge.”
Although the vehicle looked as if waere not physically damaged by the unusual trip, Atkinson doubts its wheels will ever roll again.
“According to the report, the truck was in the creek for about a week, so I’m pretty sure it can’t be salvaged. If a brand-new truck was in that creek for a week, I doubt it could be saved,” Atkinson said. “It reminded all of us, honestly, that the Wheeling Fire Department is one of the best around. Those guys and Chief (Larry) Helms really know what they are doing. We’re lucky to have them; that’s for sure.
“They had plenty of guys there and all kinds of safety equipment. It was like they had to do this kind of thing on a daily basis,” he continued. “And Tim Braden brought one of his bigger trucks to help, and it was all on a volunteer basis. It was one of those things that you just do to help the city because they don’t have the equipment that would allow their employees to do it. It only took us about two-and-a-half hours to get it out.”
The First in 40 Years
He has towed cars for parking violations and following accidents on city streets, country roads, and on the local interstates and highways.
And Atkinson has seen the shapes and sizes of vehicles changed during his four decades with Ace Garage. But a truck in the creek? Now that’s a new one.
“We’ve removed a lot of vehicles from the streams in the area, and I did help pull a car out of Wheeling Park’s Good Lake one time. That was a long time ago,” Atkinson recalled. “There have been a couple of cars that I had to pull out of the Ohio River near the Wheeling Island Marina, and again, the Wheeling Fire Department was there for those, too.
“But this was the first time I’ve been involved with removing a pickup from the middle of Big Wheeling Creek,” he said. “But it was really a slick operation, and it was cool to see everyone working together to get that thing out of there. If the water would have gone up because of rain or melting snow, that truck would have gone into the river. If that would have happened, who knows what happens to it after that?”
