How to get a truck unstuck from Smugglers Notch

The Deeper Dig

The Vermont Agency of Transportation has an internal word for when a tractor trailer wedges itself on the windy mountain road between Stowe and Jeffersonville: a “stuckage.”

And while they’re working on a handful of ways to prevent stuck trucks, it remains a persistent, vaguely goofy, problem. Earlier this summer, not too long after the Notch road reopened from its annual winter hibernation, two trucks got stuck in the Notch in less than two weeks.

From 2009 to 2021, an average of 8.6 trucks have gotten stuck in the Notch each year, according to data from the Vermont Agency of Transportation. That number has decreased in recent years, with only five stuckages in 2021.

The agency isn’t exactly sure what’s behind the trend, said Todd Sears, the agency’s deputy bureau chief of operations and safety. They have increased the number of warning signs on surrounding roads, and gotten some GPS services — specific to commercial truckers — to exclude the Notch on their programs.

A stuckage can shut down the road for hours. It takes careful choreography to get a truck back down off the mountain.