RMPBS News
Towing trucks above 11,000 feet in one of North America’s most dangerous interstate
2/25/2025 | 3m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
Mountain Recovery has been operating in one of the harshest interstate systems in North America.
Charlie Stubblefield, who operates Mountain Recovery, tows trucks in the I-70 mountain corridor, one of the most dangerous interstates.
RMPBS News is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
RMPBS News
Towing trucks above 11,000 feet in one of North America’s most dangerous interstate
2/25/2025 | 3m 26sVideo has Closed Captions
Charlie Stubblefield, who operates Mountain Recovery, tows trucks in the I-70 mountain corridor, one of the most dangerous interstates.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipWe're responding to a crash on near the Empire exit westbound.
It's a multi-vehicle crash.
Looks like about, like, at least eight vehicles involved.
If not more.
Mountain recovery was born completely by accident.
I had a pickup truck.
I had emergency warning lights on my pickup truck because I was a firefighter, and I thought, I'm just going to start driving around and seeing what's going on.
So I started stopping on vehicles that were broke down on the side of the road.
This was like summer of 2019, and I'd stop on a vehicle and I'd say, “hey, what's going on?” And they'd be like, “hey, we're waiting for our road club or our insurance company, to send a tow truck out.
We've got a flat tire.
All we need is a tire change, and we've been waiting for them for six hours.” and no one showed up and they'd be like, could you change our tire?
And I would be like, “I could probably change your tire.” The towing and recovery world in the mountains is very unique.
In the winter, it's just what you think.
When it snows, it's on our light duty.
Guys are doing crashes.
People are rolling over, and they're going in a ditch through the wildlife fence and all of that, right?
Our heavy duty guys are doing a lot of snow poles uphill of semis that just can't make it up the hill, whether they're chained or not.
They just can't make it because it's the grades too steep, the snow is falling too hard and it's too slippery for them.
You will not make it up Berthoud Pass.
You need to turn around and go back to Denver, okay?
You won't make it up Berthoud Pass.
If you can't make it up that, you can't make it up this.
And now you go up the tallest, steepest, longest grades in North America.
Your car is performing at about 35% less capacity than normal than sea level, because that's how you know little of oxygen that we have compared to sea level.
So you're stressing your car out completely.
So if there's any weak link at all, anything whatsoever, it's going to show its face in these mountains and you're going to break down.
We work shoulder to shoulder with law enforcement, with fire, with EMS, and with CDOT.
So we've created a system.
And again, the mountains have kind of called for a system where we're very much first responders to these incidents.
What drives me is simply to help people.
And that is our mission statement.
We just I just want my guys to go out there and help people.
We're going to put our best foot forward first.
I go out there with that mentality every day, and I feel like I get that feedback every day from our customers out there that we're helping.
And I hear awesome stories of what my guys do.
I hear awesome stories firsthand of what I'm doing, and it gives me a great sense of purpose, and it's what makes me so tenacious and hungry to continue to do it every single day.
RMPBS News is a local public television program presented by RMPBS