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Have you ever looked at one of those huge truck stop gas station signs and wondered just how somebody performs maintenance on such a thing? I have an answer for you—along with what might be your new source of nightmare fuel. As it turns out, they cheat and use a little lift. And sometimes, it decides not to work.
For my part, I’m not climbing one of those without a gun to my head, so I salute the men and women who are willing to scale such heights for a dead light bulb, and I’ll keep my hand to my brow a little bit longer today for the man who spent nearly six hours cooped up inside a Petro shopping center sign in Wilmington, Illinois this week.
The maintenance contractor used the sign’s lift to reach the top of the 130-foot sign at the Lorenzo Road exit off Interstate 55 on Tuesday. At about 11:30 a.m. local time, he called for help when he discovered that he couldn’t get back down. Police and fire units swarmed, but little happened until nearly 4:00 p.m., when responders were finally able to pluck him from the tiny enclosure.
Worker stuck 100 feet on Illinois gas station sign
According to the local fire department, the delay was caused by simple math. The sign is 130 feet tall; the department’s longest ladders top out at about 100 feet—that’s a gap the size of a 2-1/2 story house. On top of that, the worker was unharmed and relatively unperturbed, so while there was some urgency to retrieve him, it was not exactly a life-and-death situation. The contractor even threw a thumbs-up to a passing news chopper.
Responders eventually sourced a lift from a job site in Joliet—about 25 minutes away. According to Chicago’s ABC 7, the contractor was physically unharmed and refused treatment at the scene. Based on comments in a private Facebook group, it appears he remained in good spirits throughout the incident. Better him than me!
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Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
