Living out in corn and bean country, it’s not unusual to get stuck behind a combine or large tractor pulling a huge disc, but this was a first for me. Yep, that’s a tracked excavator gently ambling across the bridge at maybe 2 MPH. Thankfully A) the bridge held, and B) he swung off into the field as soon as he got across.
So what’s the slowest/most interesting thing you’ve been stuck behind in traffic?
It’s very unlikely, but being stuck behind one of these when they are being transfered must be truly annoying at around 0.3 km/h 🙂
I have no idea what that thing is, but the size of that blade is kind of terrifying!
It’s a brown coal excavator, it’s even bigger than it looks. Scary. Wiki info.
You win – just keep that thing pointing away from me!
Looks like something out of “The Terminator”!!!
a diesel Peugeot 504 or vw rabbit(diesel).
LOL!
Sorry (unless you were the guy in the Corvette whose ego was bruised when my Rabbit passed him on the highway).
I’ve been stuck behind:
45 km/h microcars, farm tractors, diggers, articulated wheel loaders, articulated dump trucks, combines, potato harvesters, sugar beet harvesters, self propelled sprayers, forage harvesters, self propelled liquid manure haulers (pictured below, courtesy G. van Oostrum-trekkerweb.nl) and 4×4 trucks with tracks (pictured further down).
A 4×4 truck with tracks:
A road roller,fortunately not for very long
In Charleston it’s always the horse drawn carriages filled with tourists. Frustrating as it is, I don’t like to get aggressive with the carriages when I’m behind one because it’s rude and the tourists do spend some money here. The tour guides often stop to talk about some significant spot or other, and if you get stuck behind one on some of our narrower streets you’re just screwed.
I don’t have a picture, but I was once stuck behind a moving house.
If you were travelling through Eugene at the time, blame Paul. 🙂
I’ve been stuck behind both school busses and the whole school! (one room schoolhouse being moved to a museum site)
A regular house is bad, but I think this would take the cake–a 210 foot tall, 4900 ton, 129 year old brick lighthouse. It took 23 days to move a little over half a mile!
(No I wasn’t personally stuck behind it obviously, but that has to be some sort of record for slow-moving objects. Impressive engineering feat though!)
I have been stuck behind Amish Buggies and sometimes on an incline. Also have been stuck behind farm wagons as they wander around in their lane and believe it or not when one of their tires blow it really slows them down especially during turns. Been stuck behind a mobile chicken coop or two (old school bus) which they somehow got running, but the lack of exhaust, proper tune up, and severe unroadworthiness keeps me far back. Towing a mobile chicken coop (old school bus) is even slower.
Anyone hear of the song International Harvestor by Craig Morgan?
Heh! That song pretty much sums up how I feel sometimes driving our tractors on a few of the paved roads around our farm, even though I don’t normally listen to mainstream country and we’re a JD-only farm.
I’ve heard it. It brought a laugh to me the last time I heard it- I was driving down the road on our White 2-105 pulling a plow. There was a BMW behind me. This was a narrow road, and I couldn’t pull over.
Perfect. Plus, I know the BMW owner! 😉
Been stuck driving a combine and a loaded bobtruck struggling to make thirty miles an hour. Lawnmowers are no fun to ride either
Yes, I’ve been stuck behind Amish buggies. Also, some kind of very large farm equipment that only goes about 10-15 mph, and which takes up a bit more than one lane on a 2-lane road.
In absolute terms? Nothing memorable. In relative terms, it’s powerful, late-model cars dawdling on freeway on-ramps, while I’m trying to merge more gracefully in my Prius or pickup. A very common occurrence during my Siliicon Valley commutes. Usually a cell-phone-chatting BMW M5 or AMG Merc driver.
+1000. It’s particularly irritating to me to be in this situation; my S10 2.2L needs the entire on ramp to get to traffic speed (65 – 70mph) only to get stuck behind some mouth breather or “enthusiast” with 2-3X times the horsepower entering at 45mph. A real pet peeve for me.
On the way to Elpaso Tx.
Happened in 2011 and again in 2014
Must be fun to drive that with a stiff breeze blowing around.
Unfortunately too many weekday mornings I am stuck behind what seems to be the slowest vehicle in existence merging into 65-70 mph traffic at a sedate 45mph
I grew up just east of Amish country in Pennsylvania, and eventually lived in the Coronado Cays, west of San Diego bay. The Amish buggys got nothing on the blue-hairs driving old diesel Mercedes up the Strand…
Quickest answer is “All of them!”
Do sheep being herded down a village street count?
I was thinking more in terms of wheeled vehicles, but sheep sure are slow. We sometimes come across them here being herded from one paddock to another – but there’s always a sign to warn you before you come across them. Never had them going through town though. Who cleans the street after them? 😉
But now and then there’s a sheep of cow that’s got through the fence. Now those are a REAL hazard, as you never know which way they’ll go.
Several decades ago, my dad came upon a road grader driving half in the lane/half on the shoulder doing 5 MPH up a grade on a deserted two lane highway in Southern Arizona. The driver waved my dad by, but when we got out of the mountain pass we got pulled over by an Arizona Highway Patrolman. He gave my dad a ticket for passing in a no-passing zone.
Heavy farm machinery is limited to 40kmh on our roads and are common on the rural roads here from now through to the end of harvest and they all go 40kmh 24 of your old fashioned mph.
Got stuck behind one of those scissor lifts the other day. Took ten minutes to go one city block, not sure of the speed but below 5 kph as that’s where my speedo starts to register.
1903 or so Curved Dash Oldsmoble. Fortunately, only about 1/2 mile until he turned off into his driveway. Didn’t have time to stop and talk to the owner, so I’m guessing on the year – but it was an original, not one of the later replicars.
A replica would be faster!
Next to the occasional house, probably the guy in a powered wheelchair. Can’t get mad at him, because he’s got enough on his plate.
Not slowest, but most annoying: a tourist bus on a dry, dusty dirt road in Iceland. For about 20 miles. It kicked up such a cloud of dirt that I couldn’t see to pass it. We would pull over occasionally to get some breathing room. But before long, we were right back behind it again.
The hands down, slowest vehicle I’ve been stuck behind is the old 4 cylinder Isuzu Trooper. These things weighed? 2 tons? And the engines produced 85 horsepower? And as under-powered as Troopers were, there was a diesel powered version.
Since moving to Palm Springs, I’ve been stuck behind several blue-haired matrons driving gigantic white Town Cars at 20 mph, usually with their shriveled husband in the passenger seat. BTW, this place has all kinds of beautifully preserved CCs, and I hope to write up some of them soon.
A drunk old guy on a mobility scooter hogging a lane of traffic with an open two-four between his feet and a bottle in his hand shouting obscenities at everyone who passed or honked at him. It happens surprisingly often though they are not always drunk.
In the winter snow covered sidewalks force them onto the streets making it just one more winter driving hazard.
The slowest thing I have ever been behind is the wheel of my 1973 Super Beetle with sorta-automatic transmission. One time, I was beaten pulling away from a traffic signal by a school bus (admittedly on a slight uphill grade) with the little kids jeering at me from the bus windows and everything. It was pretty humiliating.
I’m sure many people would have identified my dad’s 1961 Mercedes 190Db. That was an astonishingly gutless wonder. One wonders why on earth it was ever imported into the U.S. In my own experience, the usual construction equipment. There was a unique traffic-stopping moment, though; once, while we were on a road crossing through a USAF base, traffic was stopped while a C5 cargo plane was towed across from one area of a storage facility to another. Even though the road crosses the air base below grade level, and there is a wide overpass connecting the two areas, I guess it was deemed safest to stop traffic in case anything went wrong in moving that huge aircraft.
Amish horse-drawn manure wagon, on the two lane “Pinchot” road near Pine Grove Mills, PA. In July.
Most memorable slow poke: Goggomobile, uphill around a curve, driven by an old farmer with his wife riding shotgun. I think he felt embarrassed.
Many of the above ~ coming out of Work past midnight and discovering a fracking HOUSE blocking the entire 1/2 of the bridge I was on for 35 minutes was a real pisser but those G-D yuppie dickheads on bicycles who take more than a lane in areas it’s simply unsafe to pass , , who clearly ENJOY holding you up , is the very worst .
GRrrrrrrrrr……..
-Nate
+1 re arrogant cyclists – yes we have plenty in New Zealand! Admittedly, I’m a cyclist, but I’m always hard over on the shoulder, well out of the way of any wayward drivers!
I used to ride bicycles before I was crippled so I don’t mind them but _these_ @$$hats always blow stop signs/lights , wobble all over the road and generally act like entitled Monarchy who needn’t follow any Traffic Laws ~ then when some stupid drunk gets pissed off and bumps them in a rage (a BAD THING I realize !) they begin to scream bloody murder .
If you act like a Child , expect to be treated like one .
-Nate
And in Portland they also like to ride right down the middle of the street and force you to follow them. While blowing through the stop signs. I always think of an old George Carlin politically incorrect comedy routine when this happens, it helps me smile and keep my cool. I sometimes ride a bike myself but value my life enough to be courteous and safe.
Not including agricultural or heavy construction vehicles, a late model [in 2004] Volvo staztion wagon with a “save the whales” bumper sticker doing about 20 mph on Rt.30 heading to Lancaster,PA. Since this is two ways with a center passing lane, it took a good 45 minutes until I could pass. I was pulling hairs out of my head. When I finally got ahead of him, I floored my Saturn and left him in the dust. And he still lagged 2000 feet behind me in a 40 mph zone!
Well I live in a mostly rural area, so there are always tractors etc wandering around. I also live on the main State Highway, so am frequently woken up by houses going past my house in the dead of night – there’s a pedestrian island a few doors down, so the houses often stop outside my, uh, house to get jacked up high enough to pass over the island’s bars. It’s the graunching and screeching as they’re jacked up that wakes me, so I usually toddle outside to watch – it’s really rather fascinating!
Most interesting thing I’ve been stuck behind was about 5 years ago when a wind farm was being built in the district. The blades for the wind turbines were enormously long, with steerable rear bogies. Took about 6 months to get them all shifted to site. They zipped along fine on the straight bits of road, but the minute there was a town or roundabout etc, things got glacial.
And speaking of getting stuck behind slow things: b*%@#y tourists!! Heading to the family farm for an early Christmas gathering today, I was stuck behind a new Toyota Hiace campervan doing 75km/h (our limit is 100). I didn’t mind that, as the countryside is beautifully scenic, but as we got to a winding section, they got slower and slower, down to 25km/h. Eventually they just stopped, in the lane on a virtually blind corner!! I gingerly passed them and watched in the mirror as a lady got out and walked across the road to take photos – leaving the van in the middle of the lane on the corner!!
I’ll go with Roger’s nomination. Particularly during the drought ten years or so ago there were a lot of mobs of sheep or cattle being moved along roads to graze on the roadside grass, droving it is called. When you come across a mob of 200 animals traffic stops until they clear the road.
Also have come across horse-drawn carriages in the tourist area of the town I grew up in – nothing to do but follow slowly, they travel a block or two and turn off.
One memorable one was driving through the Flinders Ranges in outback South Australia when I came across a dust cloud that I thought might have been a 4×4 and caravan or truck at 60-70km/h (100km/h speed limit if you were game), but what appeared out of the dust when I got to within about 20m was a road train doing 40km/h – at least it was easy to overtake at that speed.
On the other hand, when a guy from Queensland bought an Upton tractor from Cowra in NSW back in the 1960’s, his mate in the Holden they drove down could not keep up with the tractor on the 1000+ mile trip home. Those Upton tractors could do 55mph or so.
The most interesting thing I was not stuck behind but deliberately went to see was the beer tanks. A route was chosen with the least amount of power lines and no underpasses and it took several nights to deliver them from the port of Hamilton to near Pearson Airport in Toronto. Someone said it looked like a couple of Saturn V rockets. They were massive.
Toyota Corolla driven by a bluehair.
occasionally construction equipment or farm equipment but as per vehicles made for road travel it is those mobile cranes
Model T Fords on tour.
Combine harvesters – ’tis the season (southern hemisphere)
And here’s the song.
This happened to me last Tuesday, on the way to work. I’d abandoned the state highway, due to a long, slow line of vehicles that had been bottled up behind a huge tank-style truck that still defies description, at which time I chose to dive down an adjacent county road that went the same way. Up one hill, down another – and then, there was our neighbor’s combine, taking up the whole width of the road, and crawling – transport gear being far-from-going-plaid. At that point, I had to go right angles, and take yet another backroad, but still arrived at work on time. It now occurs to me that I should have gotten a pic of the broad arse of the Conkle’s harvester, but it didn’t occur to me, just then.
Here in northeast Ohio it’s common to get stuck behind Amish buggies. Which is no fun on a motorcycle when a horse decides to relieve itself 🙁 .
US Virgin Islands water truck with load, in lowest low gear going up a mountain at slower than walking pace. Homes collect rainwater from roofs, stored in cisterns. During dry spells, water will need to be replenished via water tanker trucks. Couldn’t pass, they drive on the left, with US federalized left steering cars!
I know the original post dates from a while back…but I do have a story to add. Mid 70’s… I’m driving down the road in my old hometown in upstate NY, and got behind a long line of cars…I thought perhaps I’d gotten caught behind a funeral caravan or something. As I progress down the road, the line shortens as drivers lose their patience with the 15-20 mph or so speed and turn off onto side streets. Eventually, I work my way up to the front of the line and discover the source of the slowdown….a bluehair! Only this is not just any bluehair, ……it is my own Grandmother, in her lime green Dodge Dart….both hands on the wheel with a white knuckled grip.
I disliked the color of that car, and the sound of the starter, and the 4 doors,….But it later ended up with my aunt and uncle, then my cousin, and finally…you guessed it…with me. I patched it up a bit and gave it to my wife who loved it….we called it the Green Hornet and it is pictured here. I added a green spinner to the steering wheel and the art to the trunklid. We drove what was left of it to Florida years ago, drove it for another year or so and sold it to a young fellow. Funny how the car I disliked so long ago is now the object of such good memories.