The Tow Company Said Nothing Can Pull It Out — Then the Old Man Fired Up His 1948 AutoCar Wrecker

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]The highway patrol called it impossible.

[00:00:02]State Route 47, Black Mountain Pass. 11 mi of switchbacks carved into West Virginia granite was blocked by a Peterbuilt logging truck that had jacknifed on ice and buried itself in a snowbank so deep the cab was invisible from the road. The driver, a man named Curtis Webb, had walked away with frostbite and a concussion. The truck, 42 tons of steel and timber, wasn't going anywhere. Three recovery companies had tried. modern wreckers with hydraulic booms and computercont controlled winches. They'd pulled, pushed, and calculated load angles for two full days. The truck hadn't moved an inch. By the third morning, state trooper James Holly stood beside the wreckage with the highway superintendent and three tow operators who looked like they'd given up. We need to bring in a crane, one of them said. Airlift it out.

[00:00:49]Closest heavy lift helicopter is in Pittsburgh, the superintendent said.

[00:00:54]That's $40,000 an hour minimum 4-hour job. weather permitting. So, we're looking at 16000 0 plus equipment transport. Polly stared at the buried Peterbuilt and thought about the 15 families living past the pass who'd been cut off from town for 3 days. No mail, no deliveries. One of them had a diabetic kid who needed insulin by the weekend. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through contacts until he found the name he was looking for, Frank Corless. The phone rang four times before Frank answered. It's Jim Holly's. I need to ask you something.

[00:01:30]Frank Corass was 71 years old and had been retired from the towing business for 3 years. He lived in a farmhouse on 40 acres outside Grafton, West Virginia, where he spent his days fixing things that didn't need fixing and avoiding his daughter's suggestions about senior living communities. What do you need, Jim? You still got that old auto car your dad built? Frank looked out the kitchen window toward the barn. Through the gap in the doors, he could see the nose of the wrecker covered in dust and bird droppings. It's still here. It run.

[00:02:02]Last time I started, it was 3 years ago.

[00:02:05]Ran fine then. Got a jack knifed logger on Black Mountain. 42 tons buried in snow. Three recovery companies can't move it. They're talking about a helicopter. Frank was quiet for a moment. Calling me because you think an old man with an old truck can do what three companies with new equipment can't. I'm calling you because your old man pulled a cold truck off that same mountain in 1967. And I remember my father saying it was the damnest thing he ever saw. Frank ran his hand through his gray hair. His back hurt. His knees hurt. His daughter would kill him if she found out. Take a look at it, he said.

[00:02:40]How soon can you get here? Give me 2 hours. Frank hung up and walked to the barn. The 1948 auto car sat exactly where he'd left it 3 years ago. Dust covered the hood. The tires had gone soft, but the frame was solid, the boom was intact, and the chain drum still held 200 ft of logging chain his father had installed. In 1,953, Frank had watched his father, Leo Corless, build this track from scrap after the war. Leo had bought the autoc car chassis at a military surplus auction for $200, welded a boom from salvaged oil derek steel and rigged a chain drive winch powered directly off the truck's transmission. No hydraulics, no computers, just a flathead straight six engine, a four-speed crash box, and enough torque to pull a house off its foundation. Leo had run callless heavy recovery for 40 years with that truck.

[00:03:34]pulled logging trucks out of ravines, writed overturned coal haulers, recovered equipment from places other companies wouldn't go. When Leo died in 1998, Frank had taken over the business.

[00:03:45]He'd kept the auto car running out of respect, but he'd bought modern equipment to stay competitive. By 2016, Frank was 68 and tired. His wife had passed 2 years earlier. His daughter lived in Pittsburgh and kept sending him brochers for retirement communities.

[00:04:01]He'd sold the business, kept the auto car, and tried to figure out what a man did when the only thing he knew how to do was pull heavy things out of bad places. Now standing in the barn, Frank looked at the truck his father had built and thought about the logging truck on Black Mountain. He opened the driver's door. The cab smelled like old leather and motor oil. The steering wheel was worn smooth where Leo's hands had gripped it for four decades. Frank climbed in and turned the key. The starter motor cranked. The engine coughed. Then it fired rough at first, smoothing out as fuel found its way through lines that hadn't seen use in three years. Black smoke poured from the exhaust stack. Frank let it warm up, listening to the deep, uneven rumble of six cylinders that had been pulling impossible loads since Truman was president. "All right, old man," Frank said to the truck. "Let's see if you've still got it." Drive to Black Mountain took 90 minutes. Frank kept the auto car at 35 mph, the maximum safe speed for a truck built when Eisenhower was a general. The chain drum rattled. The boom swayed slightly. Other drivers stared as he passed. He didn't care when he reached the base of Black Mountain Pass. Trooper Holly's was waiting with a sheriff's deputy and two of the recovery operators. They stared at the auto car like it was a museum piece that had escaped. Jesus Christ, one of the operators said that things from the 40s.

[00:05:22]1948, Frank said, climbing down from the cab built by my father in a barn with a cutting torch and a prayer. You think it's going to pull a 42-tonon logging truck out of a snowbank? We'll find out.

[00:05:34]Holly's led Frank up the pass on foot.

[00:05:36]The road was a sheet of ice. Snow had drifted 6 ft high in places. They rounded a switchback and Frank saw it.

[00:05:44]The Peterbuilt was jacknifed at a 90° angle. The cab buried nose first in a snowbank. The trailer sprawled across both lanes. The load, 60 oak logs, each one weighing half a ton, was chained to the flatbed. Three modern wreckers sat idle nearby. Operators stood around drinking coffee from thermoses, looking defeated. "We tried pulling from the front," one of them explained. "Couldn't get traction, tried pushing from the side, just spun out. The trucks wedged into frozen ground under that snow. It's not coming out without a crane." Frank walked around the wreck slowly, studying the angle of the cab, the position of the load, the grade of the road. Been pulling from the wrong direction, he said. What? You're fighting the weight and the angle at the same time. That's why you're losing traction. What's your brilliant plan? Frank pointed uphill.

[00:06:30]I'm going to pull from above. Use gravity instead of fighting it.

[00:06:34]Operators looked at each other. Going to drive that antique up there. One of them asked, gesturing at the steep grade above the wreck. That's the idea. A blizzard on ice. Yep, old man. You're going to kill yourself. Frank looked at him with the calm eyes of someone who'd spent 50 years doing things people said couldn't be done. Maybe, he said, but I'm still going to try. He walked back down to the auto car and climbed in. The operators watched as Frank shifted into low gear and started up the mountain.

[00:07:03]The chain drive transmission howled. The rear wheels, massive things with steel chains wrapped around them, bit into the ice. The auto car climbed slowly, agonizingly. The old wrecker ground its way up the grade that modern trucks couldn't handle. Frank kept the throttle steady, letting the engine's torque do the work. Halfway up, the rear ends started to slide. Frank corrected without panic, steering into the slide, letting the chains find grip. The auto car kept climbing. At the top of the grade, Frank positioned the truck 150 ft above the jack knifed Peterbuilt. He set the parking brake, deployed the outriggers, manual screw jacks that took 10 minutes to extend, and locked the boom. Then he rigged the chain. He ran 200 ft of logging chain from the winch drum down the slope to the buried Peterbuilt, threading it through two snatch blocks anchored to trees. The blocks redirected the pull, changing the angle, so instead of fighting the truck's weight, Frank would be using gravity to help pull it backward and upward simultaneously.

[00:08:04]It took him two hours to set up in the blowing snow. When he was finished, he climbed back into the auto car, engaged the winch clutch, and pushed the throttle forward. The chain went tight.

[00:08:14]The drum began to turn for 30 seconds.

[00:08:16]Nothing happened. Then the Peterbuilt moved not much, 6 in a foot, but it moved. Frank kept the throttle steady.

[00:08:23]The autocar's engine screamed. The chain hummed. The snatch blocks groaned under load. The Peterbuilt kept moving.

[00:08:31]Slowly, impossibly, the buried logging truck began to rise out of the snowbank, dragged backward and upward by a machine that weighed a fifth of what it was pulling. The recovery operators stood in the snow, mouths open. How the hell it's pulling it? That truck's older than my father. 20 ft. 30. The Peterbuilt's cab broke free of the snow, tilted at an angle, but moving steadily backward. 50 ft. 70. Frank worked the winch in pulses, letting the chain take the load in stages, never jerking, never rushing.

[00:09:01]At 100 ft, the Peterbuilt was clear of the snowbank. Sitting on the road, straightened out, ready to be towed.

[00:09:07]Frank released the winch and shut down the auto car. The sudden silence was enormous. He climbed out of the cab, his breath steaming in the cold air. Trooper Holly's walked over, shaking his head.

[00:09:18]I've been in law enforcement for 30 years. I've seen a lot of things, but I've never seen that. One of the recovery operators approached, the same one who'd called Frank an old man. He asked, "Leverage?" Frank said, "Your modern trucks are powerful, but they're designed for controlled pulls on stable ground. That autoc car was built in an era when controlled meant whatever the operator could manage with his hands and his brain. It doesn't have safety limits. It just pulls until something gives. If the chain had snapped, then I'd have used a different chain.

[00:09:48]Operator extended his hand. I'm sorry for what I said earlier. Frank shook it.

[00:09:53]You weren't wrong. I'm an old man, but so is the truck. We've both got a few more pools left in us. By evening, the Peterbuilt had been towed off the mountain. The highway reopened. The 15 families on the other side got their mail, their groceries, and the diabetic kid got his insulin. Frank drove the auto car home as the sun set. His daughter called that night. Someone had posted a video of the recovery on Facebook. It had 10,000 views. Dad, you drove that death trap up a mountain in a blizzard. It's not a death trap. Your grandfather built it solid. You're 71 years old. The truck's 76. We both did fine. She was quiet for a moment. Are you okay? I'm better than okay. What does that mean? Frank looked out the window at the barn where the autoc sat cooling, chain still spooled on the drum. It means I remembered something I'd forgotten. What? What I'm good at?

[00:10:43]Word spread fast in small counties. By the end of the week, Frank had three calls. A farmer with a tractor stuck in a sinkhole. a contractor whose excavator had broken through a bridge. A trucking company with a disabled semi-blocking a lumber yard. Frank took all three jobs.

[00:10:57]He didn't advertise, didn't have a website, just the phone number he'd had since 1975 and the truck his father had built in a barn. By spring, Callis heavy recovery was back in business. Frank hired a part-time assistant, a young guy named Mason, who'd been working at one of the modern tow companies and got tired of being told what computers said was impossible. Your truck doesn't have a computer, Mason said the first time he saw the auto car. Nope. How do you calculate load limits? I don't. I look at the job, figure out what needs doing and do it. What if you're wrong? Then I try something else. Mason grinned. I think I'm going to like this. They work together through the summer and fall.

[00:11:37]Frank taught Mason everything Leo had taught him. How to read an angle, how to set a snatch block, how to work a manual winch with patience instead of force.

[00:11:46]Modern equipment makes you lazy. Frank told him one afternoon while they were rigging a pull. It does the thinking for you. You just push buttons. Out here, when the computers say no and the safety systems won't let you try, you need to know how to do it the old way. What's the old way? Chain leverage and not giving up. One Saturday in October, Frank got a call from Jim Holly's.

[00:12:07]Frank, you remember that Peterbuilt you pulled off Black Mountain? Yeah. Driver wants to meet you. Says he never got to say thank you. Curtis Webb showed up at Frank's barn the next afternoon driving a new Peterbuilt with the same company logo. He was mid-40s, built like someone who'd spent his life lifting heavy things. He walked with a slight limp from the frostbite. Mister Callus, I'm Curtis Webb. Frank shook his hand. Call me Frank. I wanted to thank you for what you did. My boss told me three companies tried and couldn't get my truck out.

[00:12:36]Said you showed up with some old wrecker and had it cleared in 2 hours. About that, yeah. Curtis looked at the auto car sitting in the barn. That's it.

[00:12:44]That's it. He walked around the truck slowly. The way people walk around museum exhibits. My grandfather drove a truck like this in the 50s. Hauled coal in Kentucky. He used to say the old equipment had sold. Modern stuff's just machines. Frank smiled. Your grandfather was a smart man. Curtis turned back to him. I wanted to ask you something. My company's got a contract hauling timber out of Monaela. Rough terrain, bad roads. We get stuck a lot and the modern tow companies charge us a fortune. Like to put you on retainer. You'd be our primary recovery contact. We'd pay you a monthly fee plus job rates. Frank thought about it. He was 72 now. His back still hurt. His knees still hurt, but the autoc still ran and Mason was learning fast. Me talked to my assistant. Frank said, "But yeah, I think we can do that." They shook on it.

[00:13:34]6 months later, Caller's Heavy Recovery had 12 retainer clients and more work than Frank and Mason could handle alone.

[00:13:42]Frank hired two more people, bought a second truck, a 1955 Diamond T he'd found in a barn in Pennsylvania, restored it with Mason over the winter.

[00:13:51]By the time Frank turned 73, he was running the busiest heavy recovery operation in three counties. His daughter stopped sending him retirement brochures. "Working more now than before you retired," she said during a visit.

[00:14:03]I'm not working, Frank said. I'm doing what I'm good at. There's a difference.

[00:14:08]You're 73 years old, Dad. So, so most people your age are playing golf. I don't like golf. She laughed despite herself. No, you like driving 70-year-old trucks up mountains in blizzards when necessary. She looked at him with an expression he hadn't seen in years. Pride maybe, or understanding.

[00:14:26]Mom would have loved this, she said quietly. Yeah, Frank said she would have. On a cold morning in January 2023, 4 years after the Black Mountain Pull, Frank got a call from a voice he didn't recognize. Mr. Corless, my name's Aaron Vance. I'm a reporter with the Charleston Gazette. I'm writing a story about old recovery equipment still in service. I heard about your auto car.

[00:14:48]Like to interview you, maybe get some photos of the truck. Frank thought about it. He didn't like reporters much, but the auto car had a story worth telling.

[00:14:57]All right, he said. Come on out. Aaron Vance showed up the next day with a camera and a notebook. He was young, maybe 30, with the earnest enthusiasm of someone who still believed stories mattered. Frank showed him the auto car, explained how Leo had built it, talked about the Black Mountain Pool, the job since the way old equipment worked when you understood it. Aaron took notes, asked good questions, and took about a hundred photos. This truck is incredible, he said. Can I see it work?

[00:15:25]You want to see a pull if that's possible? Frank called Curtis Webb. You got anything stuck right now? Curtis laughed. Always. I've got a loader buried at the Randolph site. Was going to call you this afternoon. Bringing a reporter. UKa. Hell no. Bring whoever you want. Pull took 3 hours. The loader was a CAT 950 sunk to its axles in mud.

[00:15:46]Frank set up a double block system, worked the winch in careful increments, and extracted the loader without drama.

[00:15:52]Aaron photographed everything. The story ran two weeks later. Full page spread in the Sunday edition with photos of Frank the auto car and Mason rigging chain.

[00:16:01]The headline read, "The wrecker that won't quit. 75year-old truck still pulling impossible loads." Frank's phone rang for 3 days straight. Mory clients my jobs. An equipment museum in Ohio asking if they could display the auto car. "It's not retired yet," Frank told them. Still working. That spring, Frank was honored by the West Virginia Towing Association Lifetime Achievement Award, standing ovation from 200 operators. He stood at the podium, uncomfortable in a suit, and said the only thing that felt true. My father built a truck in 1951 because he needed something that could do work other equipment couldn't. He didn't build it to be famous. He built it to be useful. That's all I've tried to do. Keep it useful. The rest is just noise. He sat down to applause that lasted two full minutes. Afterward, three young operators came up to him.

[00:16:52]They wanted to know how to set a manual winch, how to calculate a pull without computers. Frank spent an hour teaching them in the parking lot using the auto car as a classroom. Mason watched from a distance, grinning. Training your competition, he said later. No, Frank said. I'm making sure somebody remembers how to do this when I'm gone. Frank Corus is 75 years old now. The autoco is 77. They work together 3 days a week.

[00:17:17]Mason handles most of the jobs, but when something's truly stuck, when modern equipment says no, Frank climbs into the cab, fires up the flathead six, and shows a new generation what leverage and patience can do. His daughter visits more often. Brings his grandkids. They climb on the auto car, ask questions, listen to Frank tell stories about their great-grandfather, Leo. Is it true grandpa drove this up a mountain in a blizzard? His grandson asks. Sure did.

[00:17:43]You scared? Frank thinks about that morning. The ice, the grade, the jack knifed Peter built a little, he says, but the truck wasn't. And when you're driving something your father built with his own hands, you trust it more than you trust yourself. Autocar sits in the barn tonight. Chain spooled, boom lowered, ready tomorrow. There's a recovery job in Nicholas County. Dump truck through a bridge. Mason will set the rigging. Frank will work the winch.

[00:18:08]And the truck Leo Coris built from scrap in 1951 will pull one more impossible load out of one more bad place. Because some things don't become obsolete. They just wait for the day someone needs them again. And when that day comes, they answer.