Editor's note: This story and headline have been corrected to reflect that the truck had its brake engaged, but wasn't in gear when it rolled off a cliff.
Bighorn Basin Towing in Cody is planning one of its most challenging recoveries. A battered pickup is precariously perched on a cliff face near Wapiti, and they’re hoping to recover it intact.
The irony? The truck belongs to Eric Lopez, one of the business’s co-owners.
“I never thought one of my most challenging recoveries would be for my own vehicle,” he said. “That’s a good way to sum it up.”
Gone With The Wind
Lopez said he was was “under the weather” when he returned to his Wapiti home last weekend. He parked “Ole Blue,” a 1997 Ford F-250, outside his house and went inside to get some much-needed rest.
“When I woke up at 4 a.m., we had crazy winds,” he said. “Over 70 mph gusts. I looked outside my window, and my truck was gone.”
Lopez ruled out a theft, as it would have been impractical for anyone to want a 28-year-old truck that badly to venture out on a night like that. He waited until the following day to verify his theory.
“The only thing I could think of was that it rolled down the cliff,” he said. “Once we had daylight, I saw it on the side of the cliff.”
The verdict? Lopez parked the truck but must have forgotten to put it in gear. When the winds picked up, they were enough to roll the truck over the cliff.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said, “but that’s the story.”
Cody's Bighorn Basin Towing wants to get a Ford F-250 down off the rocky cliff it got stuck on after a windstorm blew it over the edge, and hopes that "Ole Blue" can be resurrected from the wreck. (Courtesy Bighorn Basin Towing) 
Cody's Bighorn Basin Towing wants to get a Ford F-250 down off the rocky cliff it got stuck on after a windstorm blew it over the edge, and hopes that "Ole Blue" can be resurrected from the wreck. (Courtesy Bighorn Basin Towing)
Tried And Failed
“Ole Blue” is one of the most reliable trucks at Bighorn Basin Towing. Lopez and his crew are hopeful the truck wasn't totaled in the fall off the cliff, even if it doesn’t look good.
Bighorn Basin Towing has recovered plenty of vehicles but never tackled a task with this scale and complexity. It will be a learning experience for everyone, Lopez included.
“We’ve never done anything like this,” he said. “This is the kind of recovery you see on YouTube with wreckers and helicopters. But we’re a towing, recovery, and auto-repair business. This is what we do.”
Lopez rented a Bobcat skid-steer Wednesday to coax Ole Blue off the cliff. Despite six hours of strategizing and tugging, it didn’t work.
“There's a big tooth-shaped rock that's pinning it into a crevice,” he said. “We thought that if we got a chain around it, we could pull that rock down, but it was a lot tougher than it seemed.”
The new plan is to get a bulldozer to extract the crumpled truck from the cliff. A vehicle with three times the weight should be enough to get Ole Blue down to earth again.
“If you understand physics and have the right equipment, you can get pretty much anything out of tight situations,” he said. “We’re going to get some physical and mental rest and attack it again next week.”
Junk In The Trunk
Although the truck crumpled in the fall, the Bighorn Basin Towing crew believes Ole Blue could be salvageable. They won’t know until it goes.
There’s no way of knowing how the truck will come down. If it lands on its nose, the likelihood of recovering the engine and other essentials intact won’t be great.
When Ole Blue comes down, Lopez hopes she lands on her ass. That’ll increase the chance that the heart of the machine will stay intact.
“We don't know how she'll come off the cliff,” he said. “It’s about 50 to 60 feet down to the river, and we don't know how it will fall. I prefer it to fall on its rear end, so it’ll save everything under the hood.”
You're My Boy, Blue
Bighorn Basin Towing's business has been growing. Lopez's partner was picking up a new truck when Ole Blue rolled off the cliff, but there's no replacing the one that started it all.
“We love that truck,” he said. “It’s our special truck, and our business does recovery and auto-repair. We want to recover all the core parts of the truck and do what we can to fully restore it with a new body."
Bighorn Basin Towing offers towing, recovery, and auto-repair throughout northwest Wyoming. Getting the F-250 back on the road would be a symbolic victory for the company, which Lopez and his crew see as a personal and professional goal.
"That’s the goal — it's goodbye to Ole Blue, but the story will continue," Lopez said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
