Wow, that's terrifying! Not nearly as terrifying, (at least for me) but your story reminded me of an ever-so-slightly-hair-raising experience I had this winter. First of all, disclaimer: Just because myself and others have admittedly done all sorts of stupid/dangerous/illegal things, doesn't mean others should. In a nutshell, it involved riding shotgun in an old army Deuce and a Half fuel tanker which had NO BRAKES, in about 8" of wet, sloppy snow, with solid ice under that (half-melted snow that had refrozen as solid ice), on a 6-mile drive that mostly involved downhill grades, all on snowy, icy dirt/gravel roads. (It also involved fording a river, I might add). I had driving a stick shift explained to me on this drive, along with a whole bunch of other nuances of driving a Deuce. (First thing, as we're pulling out of his driveway, "When you get one of these, go through the brakes immediately!" (I'll just throw in here that they are a blast to drive and work on if you ask me). Now, mind you, these are all unpaved country roads like I mentioned, and there's about 3 downed trees in the course of 6 miles. (all unpaved rural dirt roads). Two of them were small enough you could drive over but slightly around them with a 2-1/2 ton 6X6 (gotta love 6 wheel drive!). So as we're driving over/around this one particular downed tree, my friend is telling me all about the transfer case on these trucks and the air-actuated 6-wheel drive (Like I said, these are neat, vintage, cool vehicles!). We did almost go off the shoulder this time, it was real close, we were getting ready to bail if we had to. The closer you get to the other end of this particular road, going the direction we were going, it starts going more and more downhill. One's gear-shifting skills prevail when you have no brakes! We basically drove the whole way in low-range 3rd gear, but on a downhill stretch you can still get going pretty fast...30MPH is kind of terrifying when you have no brakes in a 2-1/2 ton truck on a downhill road in snow and ice! The stock tires these trucks have also suck as far as snow/ice traction is concerned.
Another funny side story involving this particular truck: Being that it was a diesel tanker, which had sat for awhile, there was some water in the plumbing, which of course froze during the cold winter months. We finally had gotten the truck thawed out prior to the drive I just described above...there's all sorts of little tricks...a blue tarp over the truck with a propane weed-burner in a piece of 6" stovepipe does wonders, as does a propane "Reddy-Heater". We finally got the damn thing thawed out enough to be workable one evening, and proceeded to drain the last few gallons of diesel, water/ice, and other crap out of the tanks. This involved draining it into about four five-gallon buckets. Then we got the truck running (At least it fired right up, batteries weren't dead) and started pumping from the dispensing hose back into the top of the tank (don't remember exactly why, but probably freeing up crap in the plumbing system). When you have a fuel nozzle going for an extended period, you want to stick something in there that holds the trigger so you don't have to. Just don't use a pocketknife. I used my friend's pocketknife to wedge the trigger in the "On" position while we were doing this. Did I mention it's almost dark outside and about 25F too? Finally, we shut things down and I proceeded to pull the knife out. Right as the guy I'm working with says "Don't drop my knife in the tank!", I fumble the damn thing and THUNK! Right in the tank it goes. (Whoops!). We knew we had to get it out, but waited until daylight that next morning. Being the way we are, we were coming up with all sorts of crazy ways to recover this knife. We even teased about cutting a hole in the side of the tank. What did work was a piece of lath and a deck screw in the end of it...it came right out! I bet that knife still smells like #2 diesel, though! (It became an inside joke all its own).