Securing your load could save your stuff and someone else's life

Photo Courtesy cdllife.com Lost items on freeways can cause severe damage or even cause a fatality. Securing a load before hitting the highway ensures you keep your stuff while keeping everyone else safe.

By Tom Peterson 

A crash on Interstate 84 near milepost 61 on Saturday, July 9, highlights the need to really cinch loads down when hauling items in vehicles through the windy and gusty gorge.

And if you don’t know how, it’s a good idea to ask for help. Or, hire a pro. 

While vehicles are moving at 65 miles per hour or more on the freeway, additional headwinds or gusts can take that force to over 100 miles per hour. 

Those are category 2 hurricane wind forces. 

They can rip a roof apart. So, losing an item out of a pickup bed or off the roof of a car is a sure bet if not tied down properly.

On Saturday, a matress blew out of a Chevy Silverado pickup while it was headed westbound on I-84 at about 7:30 a.m. 

Twenty-nine-year-old Ryan Daniel Carvalho of Hermiston was also westbound in the right lane when his 2014 Blue Toyota Corolla struck the mattress blocking his lane, according to an Oregon State Police Report.

The mattress caught under the vehicle and caused Carvalho’s steering wheel to lock up. Without the ability to steer, the car hit the concrete center median, before crossing both lanes and coming to a rest on the right shoulder, the report states.

Damage to the vehicle is estimated in the thousands of dollars and it had to be towed to Hood River by Guzman Towing.  The mattress? Destroyed. 

The plastic covering the mattress contained information about where it was purchased, according to Oregon State Police. While following up at the furniture store, the driver showed up to buy a replacement mattress, according to the State Police report.  

The 74- year- old man from Hood River, Thomas Furrow, confessed to losing the mattress, returning to pick it up and not stopping to check on the Toyota he knew had hit it. 

Furrow was criminally cited for fail to perform the duties of a driver, according to the report.

Furrow’s wife Bertha was contacted by CCCNews on July 13. She said the brand new mattress was for their kids living in Salem and her husband was taking it to them.

“We feel really bad about it,” she said. “There was a lesson to be learned.”

In this case, the mattress left the back of the vehicle without Furrow even knowing it, she said. 

Items poorly secured or not at all, from time to time, cause accidents, or even fatalities, said Oregon State Police Lieutenant Les Kipper. 

Oregon State Police Lieutenant Les Kipper

“We run into it periodically,” Kipper said. “The bulk of the time, it is because the load was not  fully secured. We’ve had a couple of crashes over the years that have had tragic results.”

Kipper said freeway spills happen often times after people pick up items at stores such as Home Depot.

“My advice is to double-check a load to make sure it is secure. If you are not able to do it or don’t know how to, ask for assistance from the people where you purchased the items.”

People can also arrange for pickup and delivery by a professional. It costs more, but it also ensures it arrives safely.

It’s also wise to check your secured load after driving a mile or two in town as loads sometimes settle causing straps or ropes to go slack, Kipper said. Items are then loose enough to slip out of a vehicle at higher speeds. Give those tie-downs an extra cinch.

“Drive it around town before you hit the highway and start going 65 miles per hour. There are a lot of instances where items are purchased and people get on the highway and their items fall out of their vehicles within the first mile or two.”