The man himself recovers a wreck on ‘Highway Thru Hell’

Newest truck in Jamie Davis Towing’s fleet

Jamie Davis – the man himself – got out of the office and on the road during Sunday night’s episode of “Highway Thru Hell,” the Weather Channel’s rescue and recovery reality program set in western Canada.

Normally, Davis is an on-camera narrator explaining much of what his team does and offering candid insights into the guys who work for him at Jamie Davis Towing; sometimes even questioning their decisions at accident scenes.

But, in Sunday’s episode, things got so busy that Davis got in his company’s newest truck to pull a tractor/trailer loaded with medical supplies back onto the road. Highway 3 in British Columbia was iced over and the truck’s owner wanted it back on the road ASAP without unloading the cargo.

Davis proved why his name is on doors of the company’s trucks. With two lines on the truck and two on the trailer, he coaxed the rig back onto the road despite a few tense moments when the crew thought the cargo would bust through the trailer.

Another job in Sunday night’s show did not go so quickly or as easily. Not by a long shot.

A tractor/trailer loaded with paper slid off Highway 1 – a.k.a. the Trans-Canada Highway – and the team from Quiring Towing had to get it recovered and out of the way before the morning traffic into Vancouver began.

The truck and trailer were so heavily damaged that recovery was difficult and time-consuming. Al Quiring and Gord Boyd decided to slide the fully loaded trailer onto a lowboy, the deck of which could be tilted slide it.

Good decision that it was, the process was complicated when part of the trailer split open. Numerous 500-pound bales of paper had to be removed by hand. This added more time, which the Quiring crew did not have.

With some delicate maneuvering, the trailer was winched onto the lowboy and half the job was done.

Quiring and Boyd were then able to use two wreckers to lift the mangled truck and drive another lowboy under it, clearing the accident scene just as the morning rush got started.

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Boyd. “But, we got it done.”

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Sunday’s episode also provided a slightly odd, but amusing, behind the scenes look of the Jamie Davis company.

One of Davis’ lead drivers, Colin McLean, was not performing and intricate recovery. Instead, he was taking care of some company housekeeping: replenishing its water supply.

The building has no well or water service. Instead it relies on water stored in a tank.

To refill it, McLean used a fire truck with a huge water tank onboard. However, the truck is uninsured so it had to be towed to the water source, filled, and towed back to the Davis building.