I'm sure we all have stories, pics are better yet.

Mine was 1994. I had a lifted 78 Ford Bronco that I figured was indestructable. Late August before school started buddies and I were on our way back to check on deer stands. It looked muddy and swamp, beacuse it was. I stopped and my buddy said we got back here with the van this spring and it's front wheel drive...you'll be fine.

Famous last words. It wasn't fine. I burried it to the frame in the front and the rear diff in the back. We dug and dug to no avail. Finally walked 3/4 mile to the road and a coulpe of loggers who weren't much older than us drove back to pull us out. Told them where not to drive and since he had a indestructable lifted Chevy with 35's, he could go anywhere. As long as anywhere didn't include 5' from my back bumper because he burried it worse than me.

We cut some logs, and jacked his up, sticking a slightly longer log under the truck each time. We got him out. They had to go....he gave my buddy a ride to town to get his dad's new 1994 F-150 4x4. We pulled my Bronco out, but pretty much ruined the cluth on the truck with less than 5k on the odometer.

Young and dumb would elplain the entire process.... that and 8 hours of ball busting work in August heat.

Mine was being stuck with air underneath. Dad and I were hunting in my 2x4 pickup, going up a 1 track road along a creek. At one point, we were about 10' above the water. Then the back end sunk. It went down until we were sitting on the frame. A section of road had caved in and left a rear wheel hanging free 10' above the creek.
We hiked out about 3 or 4 miles and found some young guys who offered to help us out. They had a heavy 3/4 ton 4x4 and lots of chains, cables, etc. We hooked a cable to my rear axle and it ran under the bumper so when he pulled, it lifted the bumper a bit. I got in and turned the steering wheel so it would roll up the hill around the cave-in as he pulled backwards. It worked. We were out in just a few minutes.

It was about 1976. I was with my friend in his old Ford pick-up, headed down a grassed path along a plowed field. A large puddle appeared ahead of us, covering the path. His instant decision (we were young, and therefore moving very fast) was to veer out into the field around the puddle. Naturally, the field was completely saturated, as was evidenced by the aforementioned puddle. The truck was suddenly sitting on the frame.

Exiting on my side of the truck, we (remember - young and stupid, not old like we are now) thought that if we could clear some of the mud from the tire tread, we would be ble to get out. In digging at the mud with my fingers, I managed to locate some sharp object residing therein, which resulted in a fair amount of blood soaking through the beauty mask on my hand. We then hiked a mile or so to the farm of a friend. He told us to jump into his 4-wheel drive truck. Naturally, the mud won this tug-of-war quite easily. A return trip to the farm resulted in bringing a tractor into the fray, which extricated the truck.

At this point, more attention was paid to my finger, which when the dried mud was washed away, continued to emit blood at an impressive rate. Closer examination revealed a rather deep V-shaped flap.

Being Saturday evening, a call was placed to the home of a local doctor, who agreed to meet us at his office. After much tsk-tsking and clean-up, he lifted the flap with a pair of tweezers and asked me to hold the tweezers while he snipped off the flap. He then nandaged it up and bid us adieu.

When I got the statement of charges covered by insurance, I found that there was included a charge for "surgical assistant" which could only have meant me when I held the tweezers.

Mine was A CJ7 with great tires and a heavy duty winch. I only had to drive thru a 30 foot patch of snow. Trouble was the snow was deeper than it looked and I ended up with all four tires off the ground while the jeep rested on the frame.
No shovel to dig with- last time that will ever happen.
The winch? the only pick point was a culvert rim about 50 feet behind me.
I strung the cable UNDER the jeep, started to pull and fouled the cable under the front leaf spring, couldn't get it free.
After a couple of hours a rancher came by and pulled me out with his truck

The worst was in my '88 Toyota 4x4, in about 2' of water on top of a stump. It was expensive and I don't like to think about it much.

A LOT of mud on a 'dry' lake on San Carlos Indian reservation in an 88' 4x4 Toyota. Nearest tree was 60' feet away and we had 55' of cable for the come-along. The nearest pavement was 4 miles away and the nearest store/civilization was 60 miles away.

It was a LONG day.

I've got a couple stories, both involve my 2002 Tundra. The more memorable story took place in November, 2003. My new wife and I had just closed on our property, 40 acres of land with a mixture of abandoned pasture, softwoods and swamp. This land is located in an area with spotty cell coverage several miles away from the nearest person we knew at the time. We'd gotten a ton of rain in the previous month or 2 and combined with the high water table of our land, it made for a great place to get stuck.

We were driving out to the property to check on my deer hunting spot in the late afternoon, taking along a bottle of champagne to celebrate the purchase of the place where we would put down roots. After checking the deer blind, we started to drive back up toward the road when suddenly we came to a fairly abrupt stop. This land was lousy with field stone in sizes from a golf ball to boulders. Turns out, the driver's side front tire had come up against a buried mid-sized rock, stopping us in our muddy tracks. Shifting into reverse and gently nudging the throttle resulted in a sickening, sinking feeling. A few more attempts to rock back and forth got the truck resting firmly on the rear axle and front skid plate. We were all done.

We spent the next 1/2 hour trying to reach help on our cell phones. Any time we managed to make a call, there was no one home at the number. We finally managed to get a return call from a good friend who said he'd come with his 4x4 Dodge, but he was at least an hour away.

The next part is my favorite. What do you do on a dark night when you have an hour to kill, a bottle of champagne, a new, young wife and a truck with enough gas in the tank to keep the heater running? Yep, that's right.

My buddy eventually showed up and after a couple attempts, got my truck freed up. We gave our thanks, took our ribbing and said our goodbyes - until my buddy's truck sank into the mud as he was driving back out the way he came in. Now it was my turn to play tow truck. Thankfully, his truck wasn't stuck as badly and we managed to get his truck free and we all drove carefully out to higher, firmer ground.

I think that's the last time I went for a ride and went parking.

I posted this in another thread this morning.

A few years ago a friend and I drove a 4wd toyota down a dirt road. Went down with no problems, not the first sign of mud or even a wet spot. Coming back about 50ft. before we got to the pavement we broke thru about 2" of hard dirt over an epic mud hole. The truck sank so fast I barely had time to get the window up to keep the mud from coming in thru the window.

I climbed out the drivers side and the truck settled down to about 1/2 way up the window on the passanger side. This in a spot a prius could have driven across it had it not broke thru the rock hard top layer.

To make a 12 hour story short my cousin who owns a wrecker service that pulls out stuck log trucks came and got it out and even had difficulty. We wound up digging under the truck and placing crossties to get it high enough to roll out the hole.

If it had been a little deeper or the truck a little heavier I'm guessing the roof would have been flush with the roadway.

My cousin didn't even charge us for the gas to run down there and pull us out lol. He said it was the best recovery he had ever done. Barely beating out a truck that tried to drive across the lakebed when the water was low and took all day to get out.

I'm glad we were in a spot nobody could watch, of course all this happened starting right at dark and continued on thru the night

2 years ago trying to get to my elk spot in a rain/snow storm. The road gave way leaving me very stuck, it was about 3 in the afternoon and getting colder. I dug and used the come-along, and highlift with a couple of straps. I had lost cell service about 30 miles back and hadn't seen a single person. Finally about 10 o'clock that night I got the truck back on the road, and decided to just drive home. Got home about midnight and went to bed, woke up the next morning with the puking and really sick, probably a good thing i got stuck and came home.

Best not stuck was with a Volkswagen Rabbit and the incident gave my car its nickname for the rest of the time I owned it.

Driving around South Florida in Palm Beach County in our old shooting area. It had rained and huge puddles were all across the dirt roads. These could more accurately be described as ponds since they were generally about 20-40 yards across. Not knowing how deep they were in the middle, I could see grass sticking up on the edges where the road would give way to the grassy fields beyond so knew the water would only be a few inches deep there. I traversed several ponds like that with no problem.

Then we came to one puddle, probably 50-60 feet across with big bushes on either side so no going around it. I figured WTH, how deep can it be? Got up to about 20 mph and went through the middle, figuring momentum would carry us through. The front end of the car disappeared completely under water and a huge bow wave washed over the entire car, going up over the windshield and roof. I remember seeing the surface of the puddle a few inches above the top of the door as we went through, we had taken the precaution of having the windows up.

Fortunately the plan worked and the car plowed through to shallow water on the other side before stalling. I restarted the engine and drove on a few feet.

A huge jacked up 4X4 truck was behind us. He slowly entered the puddle which was a big mistake. He got halfway through and his tires just started spinning. Even in 4WD all he could do was send up sprays of water from his uselessly spinning tires. Fortunately he had a winch so the driver got out - sinking in water up to his waist - attached to a tree some 50 yards away and pulled himself out.

The nickname - the license plate on the Rabbit was VUU 835 which I thought was cool - V double U 835 on a Volkswagen. But after the incident of successfully crossing a puddle more or less under water that car was known as the U-835 from then on.

Elk hunting in the Strawberry Mountains in Oregon. A friend decided that it would be more comfortable in his Winnebago than a tent. Hard pack trail, easy to get way back there.

The next morning, I went outside and the snow was up to my knees. I hooked a strap from my 3/4 ton GMC Pickup to the front of his Winnebago and we got about a mile, until a steep grade stopped all forward movement.

I unhooked and drove to John Day. No tow company would even consider it. Found a logger, who was willing to take a skidder on a lowboy. The last ten miles, I rode hanging onto the cage of the skidder. The skidder had no problem towing the Winnebago to a paved road. It wasn't cheap.

Parked on a completely dry surface back from where a spring had the ground below so wet guys had been getting stuck. Walked up to look the situation over to see if we thought we could get through or not. Decided it was better to go a long way around.

When I turned around I discovered I had parked the pickup on about two inch thick, baked from summer sun, completely dry ground that was nothing but mush underneath. Truck had sank to the bumper before we could get back to it.

Others had left many boards, pieces of carpet, sleeping bags, and other items using then to help themselves get unstuck which helped.
First time I jacked the rig up and put a 6' 4X4 under a wheel it slowly sank right back to where it had been.
Second one held a little, took us several hours work to get out.

A buddy had a small jeep back in the '70s and we were hunting SW of Ellensburg when we found a stuck pickup with a huge camper on it. We had a very long nylon strap and offered to get him unstuck... He laughed but finally got in while we attached the strap.

Pete was going mighty fast when he hit the end of the strap and the jeep just bounced a little side-to-side. Second run was a little faster yet and the pick-up hesitated for just a second before it popped right out in a single jump.

T-54 and only one foot of the turret was above the mud level, I was not the driver, we had to get it out. It took whole night.

so you took the horses out, and used them to pull the truck out of the mud?

About 1991, Toyota fj40- good friend thought he could get over a huge fallen aspen (I thought otherwise). That one took a long, long time. One of the many times we got stuck in that thing, definitely the worst. More recently, 12" of pure clay in an f150, love getting chains on truck tires after they are totally coated in clay. Looks like you've been mud wrestling.
There has been many others involving flipped vehicles etc. over the years... seems the older I get the less this happens, hmmm...

i've seen a few trucks and car get stuck on the island at low tide and all but disappear into the sand when the tide came in.

Should any of youse guys find your truck stuck upside down in the ice, here's how NOT to try pulling it out.

I've never been stuck in mud that I couldnt get out of or had a truck/tractor at the site to get me out.

But not being able to drive out, now that's a different story.

Worse for me was a '76, 3/4 ton, 4x4, short wheel base, chevy pu, with a homemade lift kit and 9.00-16 tires. Going camping/fishing in the river bottom and the river was up, way up, out of its banks, way up! The public landing has a flat topped mound and we were going to camp on it. (Yeah, JPro, you know where!)

I was driving thru the water, on the dirt road, headed for the mound. The road would dip in and out of the water, but each dip into the water was getting deeper and deeper. Finally, when the water was over my lap (4' or so), I decided I wasnt going to make it to the next high spot and decided to back-up to the last high spot, and leave the truck out of the water. We would bring the boat and load the stuff in it to get to the mound.

While backing up, I went into the ditch, dipping the breather tube into the water. That's when the truck died!

Water running into the truck on the drivers side and out the window on the passengers side.

Left the truck overnight in the water. Went into town the next day and got a friend with a 10" lift kit to pull me out of the water. Drained the water from the motor (it was full), changed oil about 3 times in the next 100 miles, changed the oil in the tranny, transfer case, front and rear ends and drove the truck for another few years before I sold it.

D6 cat. Threw both tracks on slippery frozen ground between big dirt piles. Burying a different D6 in deep clay mud was a piece of cake by comparison, just needed a couple of timbers, some chains and a few logs to get it out.

Worst I ever witnessed was a D8 tilted 30 degrees and buried to the top of the roll cage on the low side in a swamp.

T-54 is about the size of D8, isnt it? We had a t-55 recovery to help, but it was still hard work.

Nice

I rarely get stuck because I'm a chicken chit when it comes to taking stuff off road. However, in Feb 2007 my mom, dad, wife, another couple from Tenn. and myself took a snow coach tour into Yellowstone. Our guide and "driver" was a complete putz! He put us off the road so a pack of snowmobilers could go around us.


he didn't have a shovel in the vehicle, the sat phone wasn't charged and he didn't know how to use it. I'm pretty sure the 4wd wasn't working. A couple of park rangers came along on snow mobiles and helped dig. We tried to pull it out with a Park snow coach but no luck.



Eventually, another snow coach from the same company came by with a winch. Alas, neither driver knew how to operate the winch. I spent about 10min looking it all over and figured there was a remote control somewhere. It took driver #2 about 15min to figure out that we were looking for a wired remote. He says "you mean this thing?" AAAAAAAAARGH! I had the two drivers hook up the cable and then I operated the remote and pulled us out. Only took about two hours.







There are worse places to be stuck than Yellowstone, that's for sure

On night on Ft. Bragg, I was woke up by someone who said "We need your Gamma Goat to pull out a stuck jeep. Recon got a jeep stuck back in the swamp." I got up and got into the Goat, and drove it across the road and into the muck.

Recon platoon had a jeep STUCK, and another jeep STUCK, trying to drag the first one out. We hooked onto #2 with the Goat, and it wouldn't budge a bit. The Recon platoon sergeant gave me hell because I "wasn't trying hard enough". He got into my Goat and proceeded to get it stuck as well. I was trying NOT to break thru the crust, the platoon sergeant had no qualms about that.

We got hold of another driver, with a duece and a half, and he stuck IT trying to get me out. At about 4AM, we got hold of a five-ton wrecker, who hooked onto the duece and half, me, and both jeeps. He backed it up against a big pine tree, and started tugging. He pulled us ALL out at the same time .

He had the logo "Big Snatch" on the winch of his five-tonner.

drove a feed truck for one of the major hog and turkey producers in east nc. Saw some feed trucks stuck in some crazy places slid one into a ditch and the only thing keeping it from turning over was the pinetree it landed on. The local towtruck driver has a couple of places he called his 'thousand dollar mudholes" because the farmer would not fix the roads. He would get called sometimes 3 or 4 times a week to pull a load to the bin so the driver could unload then pull the rig to the road

Aaah... Gamma Goats. Don't miss them at all, though they would go almost anywhere.

Buried a RATT rig on a Dodge pickup pretty impressively in the middle of Fort Chaffee. Captain told me to move it over into a park for training, I said it looked pretty wet but he overrode me. Sank to the axles in the middle of a nice manicured park. Managed to get it out with pure manpower.. A lot of men, but it got moved.

Growing up part-time on my uncle's farm, I learned at a very young age that the solution to a stuck truck is NEVER another truck... just get the tractor.


My best stuck story wasn't actually mine... I was bird-hunting with a friend, and we were driving separate vehicles because his dog and mine couldn't get along in the same vehicle. They'd snarl and bark at each other something fierce, so we decided to hunt one dog at a time and take both vehicles. His was a jacked-up fancy GMC something-or-other, mine was a plain-jane Subaru Legacy wagon.

Long story short, he led us into a muddy bottom on the way to the grouse grounds and got himself stuck but good. The nearest tree to attach his winch to was too far for the winch cable. My Subaru had a much lighter footprint than his GMC, so I took a chance and was able to drive around him in the bottom, then park about 25 yards up the slope, then we attached his winch cable to the anchor ring under my rear bumper and we winched him out.

He had been ragging on me for driving a Subaru for a couple months prior to that day, but he never said an unkind word about the Sube again after that episode.

Went out with my college bud bandtail pigeon hunting outside Pozo Cal. It started raining hard and whilst driving up a well banked trail taking the high side we slid down to the hillside with my CJ5 rolling onto its side. Spent the night to be pulled out the next AM by a group of 4x4'ers.

When I was MUCH younger, I foolishly attempted to go a ways on the Medano Pass road in Great Sand Dunes NP with a non-4WD vehicle, despite the warning:





...it started out with hard, compacted sand but ended up like this:



Not my photo, but it looks like almost the same spot
Eventually a park ranger winched me back onto the hard sand. I didn't get a ticket, fortunately!
More recently, I hiked back into the same area and went much further and camped in one of the backcountry sites.

That road does get SOFT. Took my sister's 4Runner through there over summer and I don't think my foot ever came off the floor.

Haven't heard of a Gamma Goat for a long time. And it is possible to get one stuck. At least to get it articulated to the point where it won't go anywhere.

This is around December 1974 somewhere in the Hartz Mountains of FRG. We had just spent three days humping them for a little exercise and were waiting at the pickup point to load up in trucks for the ride back to West Berlin. While we were waiting the medic decided to see if he could cross that little gully in his goat. He didn't. Those guys in front of the deuce and a half are preparing to winch him out, which they did.

Got this 60ft boat stuck in the Gull River, Lake Nipigon. It only took 3 hours to pull it up--but it took 9 days with a feller-buncher--an 3400 linkbelt backhoe and a 848 Grapple Sidder to build 2 miles of road across a tamarack swamp.

1984
I was sporting a cast on my right leg,( torn acl) crotch to toes, and went out grouse hunting with 3 friends in a jeep cj5,with one shotgun, and a couple cases of beer.
Driver decided to try to make it down a flooded road, and didn't make it.
Had to walk back to civilization on mud roads(it was raining)
a few miles on crutches.
Cast was ruined.
no grouse.
at least I didn't have to carry the beer.
a few minutes with a winch,we were out.

One time I decided to go over the "state highway" from Medicine Bow valley over to Douglas, hunting prairie dogs and trains in 1993.
Beautiful April morning.
It had just snowed a skiff the day before, which had made for GREAT photography light, and blown.
So I'm clicking along about 45 on a dirt road across a white patch between the sage. Floop. I'd driven about 200 feet onto what turned out to be two feet of old snowpack blown in the road cut smooth as a baby's butt.
There was a farmstead down the road, so I walked down there, nobody home, but a nice round nose shovel.
Dig dig dig dig dig dig.
About halfway down, I see a PBY flying around. I walk out in the snow and write NO. He waggles and flies off.
Dig dig dig dig dig.
Now I have the 1965 unlimited slip differential Econoline down on frozen road surface.
Dig dig dig dig dig.
Now I have ramps. Dirt road is like 50 feet ahead of me.
By now, temps are a bit up and the snow is a little soft. The plan is to get onto the dirt road and then drive AROUND through the sage back to civilization, but the sage is slimy mud. Hmmm.
So, I pitched camp, had a nice fire and weenie roast, shot my rifles.
Next morning, crispy COLD, I took my flagging tape and set up a route back around the road cut. Fired up the unit, drove onto the roadway, turned around and drove the marked route back the other side of the cut. Picked up my ribbons, drove down to the farmstead to return the shovel "We wondered where you were!" and had a nice breakfast. I showed them my Wyoming official state highway map, with no CLOSED IN WINTER markings. They laughed their fannies off.
Went to Douglas the other way around, bought my own shovel and put it in the ski rack.
I took pictures but the snow fooled the light meter. Darn.

Reading all the episodes and when I read the one from 1 beaver shooter driving a commercial truck, it made me think of another one.

I was driving a 18 wheeler, hauling green oak lumber for a lumber mill, back in the early '70's. Got a load for Clarksville, Tx. and it was overweight. Scaler told me to bypass the scales at the state line, so I gave it a shot. I thought hwy 80 was on the north side of the interstate, so at the appropriate exit, I turned north. Drove a ways and took the first blacktop road to the left, which I thought would take me into Tx. I knew it wasnt hwy 80, but it had to go somewhere, or at least I thought it had to go somewhere.

It did go somewhere, about 3 miles to the end of the road, deadend! Well, I couldnt turn around, so I started backing up. 13 speed ranger, 411 rearend, doesnt backup very fast.

I passed this driveway and the house sat off the road about 100 yds, on a hill. I walked up the the man sitting on the porch, explained my situation, and asked if I could drive up his driveway, turn around on the hill and drive out again. He gave me permission, so I gave it a try.

Turned in the drive, drove up the hill, started turning around, but there was a low swampy spot between me and the road, so I was having to pull forward and back up, pull forward and back, etc., to get turned around. All I needed to do was backup one more time and I would have made it back out the drive, but my drivers started spinning. I wasnt stuck, just couldnt go backwards and didnt want to get off in the boggy mess in front of me.

Called the boss and he said to get a wrecker. I called a wrecker out of Shreveport and here he came. He looked the situation over and said he was going to pull me across the boggy area to the neighbors driveway, to get me out.

I called the boss, explained what was fixing to happen and he told me to have the wrecker driver sign a paper saying he was responsible if anything happen. Driver signed paper and away we went!

This wrecker had 3/4" cables and he managed to drag the rig into the muddy area and break both cables, 1 at a time. Now I'm really stuck. Mud was rolling onto the flatbed trailer!

This man then called Lloyds wrecker and told them to bring out the big wrecker. They showed up, after dark and hooked up to the pulling hooks on the rig. One cable over the boom and one cable straight line. This lifted the tractors front end out of the muck and he started pulling. Had to hook another smaller wrecker to the big wrecker, because the scotch-blocks wouldnt hold.

He finally got me pulled across the boggy spot and the 1st wrecker had to pay. The boss sent a dozer over to fill in the ruts when it dried up some and pay the land owner for the damages.

I didnt get fired because the scaler admitted that he had loaded me too heavy and told me to bypass the scales.

I hauled many overweight loads after that, for the company, but I learned the way around the scales!

I was in high school, young and stupid, and hauling azz around some back roads up around Lake Davis, CA in my truck. The logging roads would wind up through some trees on high ground, then through large, open meadows. I'd been flying around the forest all day, when I came to one meadow going probably 50 MPH.

This particular meadow was actually a low wetland. My speed carried me 100 feet or so out into the meadow, before the truck buried up to it's frame.

I was alone, miles from no where, and this was before cell phones.

I spent the rest of the day digging 2 tire tracks behind me back to solid ground out of the mud, using my Remington 870 buttstock as a shovel, and packing the newly dug ruts with bark from logging around the area for traction.

After about 8 hours of backbreaking work alone, I was finally able to get out.

Miserable day....

February 1983. Forest Service road, Black Hills SD. Me driving a Dodge 4x4 PU.

It had been warmer the day before and melted the snowpack, since frozen to ice. Road was too narrow to turn around, came to a straight stretch along a steep drop-off, road surface slightly canted, frozen smooth.

I inched forward hugging the hillside to my left away from the drop-off to my right. Half way along truck begins to ever so gently slide to the right

Time goes into slow-motion. Front end is heavier and slides faster, right front wheel drops off the edge. Truck tilts, and I can see down into the steep-sided gully 40 feet below, my thought at that very moment in time was "Crap, I'm not wearing my seatbelt".

Half-way over the truck stops, teetering on the edge.

I get out the driver's (uphill) door onto the road and immediately slip and fall, the ice is that slick. The left front tire had hung up on a small rock frozen in the ice, the tire was way deformed by the weight and was bulging out to one side but stayed on the rim. The right rear tire was on the road right at the edge of the drop-off, the left rear tire was hanging loose in the wheel well clear off of the ground.

Ten mile hike to the nearest convenience store, family owned. We drive back with a come-along. Truck was just as I had left it.

Winched it back off of the edge and back onto solid ground.

Asked the guy how much he wanted, he said "whatever its worth", so I gave him $100 (worth quite a lot in 1983 dollars). Not bad for an hour's work, but still way-cheap for a truck.

Birdwatcher

back in the 80s a couple of guys who were drunk got stuck near robstown tx. one of them got out to push and slipped and got pulled under the spinning tire. there was nothing left of his torso. the driver was convicted of manslaughter.

You win.

Similar thing happened here with a guy and his nanny at a strip joint. Both were hammered but she was driving and got stuck on a curb. There was fresh snow and he fell and she drove over his head with the Suburban... She was convicted of something but I do not remember exactly what it was.

He left behind a seriously disabled child that the nanny had been hired to take care of... Ugly situation all the way around...

The worst stuck lasted for about 2 months back in 2011, snow then mud. Same deal this past Spring with the mud.

It gets very depressing getting stuck everyday just trying to get your job done.

Not as depressing as getting run over though.

All of this just confirms my belief that 4wd is short hand for getting stuck further off the road.

WOW! No fair including death/dismemberment stories! Those are simply tragic, though serve as excellent reminders to always be careful.

My 1st bad "stuck" was after an ice storm in late fall 1983 driving to college. The road was through a very open area and wind always created huge snow drifts and helped polish the ice on the road.

I was driving slow (~25mph) and suddenly lifted my foot off the accelerator of my 1973 AMC Hornet "Sportabout" rear-wheel-drive-only station wagon. I had a couple hundred pounds of weight in the back, but when I let off the accelerator it was the same as if I had locked up the brakes. I started swerving/fish-tailing and despite steering into the swerve, my car started end-for-end spinning - right into the 4ft ditch alongside the road. As I came to stop, I felt the car start to roll onto it's side thinking it was going to roll all the way over onto the roof, but thankfully it stopped.

I pushed the passenger door open, climbed out and walked to the nearby farm (who knew me) and using their 4x wheel drive Case tractor (with dualies all around), was out in 15 minutes. There was no damage to my car at all - drivers door opened fine and the car ran perfectly as usual.

This wasn't me thankfully...

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Have seen too many yahoos that think driving on the beach at low tide is safe. I have launched a boat this way many times by utilizing worn tires and airing down to 12#. Yet, I do indeed have a winch on my front bumper for emergencies. Now, the way to use a winch in soft sand requires the use of a big fluked anchor that has saved my bacon to keep salt water out of my truck. But, I will say that I got stuck in a pile of schit, yes a cow schit pile, one time deer hunting late Dec. when everything seemed to be frozen solid. Not cow schit as it makes its' own heat and will stay juicy soft. Got my truck out but stunk to high heaven. MTG