By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
A house on its way along Banner Road near Northwest Highway slid off the trailer and shut down the area Tuesday and Wednesday.
Curtis Fortenberry Home Moving Company was transporting the wide-load home when the driver swerved to miss Betty and Selby Egender’s mailbox at 16512 N. Banner Road.
When the driver swerved to miss the mailbox, witnesses say the trailer veered into the soft ditch. Canadian County Commissioner Marc Hader said the ditch was soft because it had been under flood water for nearly a week.
“When you have a traditional two-lane right of way and you have a ditch there like that, you almost need to get a helicopter that can lift vertically,” he said.
William Walker, of Strike USA, was in the area because of his work on a gas pipeline under construction between Piedmont and Okarche to Durant. Walker stopped to help get the house back on the trailer.
“He (driver) got over to clear the mailbox, and got in the ditch there,” Walker said. “I came by last night and this morning and I said, ‘those people need some help.’ I asked the state trooper if I could help and he said I could.”
Walker lent his truck with a crane to pull up the home “inch-by-inch” and reinforce it with support so it could be moved.
Calls to Fortenberry were not returned, but a mobile home mover with 42 years of experience viewed photographs submitted to the Piedmont-Surry Gazette.
“Whoever put the house on there and those beams on there didn’t attach the house to the beams,” Duke Arms said. “That’s what happens when you try to move those houses and it’s a wide-load. We always move them in two pieces. Bottom line, its driver’s error.”
Arms said the house was an intact residential home, not a mobile home that is typically on wheels.
A search on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website shows a listing for Curtis Fortenberry’s moving company along with its U.S. Department of Transportation number but did not list any information regarding the company’s existing license and insurance status.
The company lists an address in Choctaw, one truck and two drivers. As of press time Wednesday, the house had not been placed back on the transport trailer.
