What It Took To Salvage That Drowned Ford Bronco In Maine From The Guy Who Saved It

Lee Foss of Island Towing has towed so many vehicles off of the beach that his company has a specific Ram truck to deal with such incapacitated vehicles. When he got the call last Saturday night around 5 pm he wasn’t told how far out this latest vehicle actually was. Two days later with the help of a flatbed and two boats, he finally got his Bronco.

We’ve all seen the infamously abandoned Bronco that was left on a sandbar off the coast of Maine but what many don’t know is that the salvage effort began almost as soon as the SUV was stuck there. Foss said that Saturday evening was a fateful night in part because of the full moon. That day is one where the tide gets especially low, and that’s why the Bronco could go so far out.

Related: Water Way To Go! New Ford Bronco Submerged By Maine High Tide For Two Nights

In his entire history of beach rescues, Foss hasn’t dealt with someone so far from the beach. “Never over where this guy went,” he told Carscoops. “This guy just went way beyond,” he continued. Due to the full moon and the exceptionally low tide, the driver only had a half-hour once parked before the water was coming over the tires according to Foss.

After the initial attempt at retrieval on Saturday night, the team returned with better equipment but still failed to yank the Ford Bronco out of the sea. Foss says that multiple issues kept the team from achieving its goal at that point.

There was no direct line of sight to tow it in and in addition, the parking brake was engaged and the rear differential locker was on so the wheels wouldn’t turn. In his words, it was like pulling “a big boulder” into shore.

To solve the problem, Foss first used airbags to get the Bronco up out of the sand during high tide. In addition, he teamed up with a local lobster fisherman who used a smaller boat in conjunction with his larger vessel to tow the floating Bronco to a different sand bar that was much closer to the shore.

Mission Complete

Once the tide went back out, Foss was able to drive a flatbed onto the beach and tow the Ford up onto the truck to complete the salvage. “I normally never put a tow truck on the beach. I usually use the ram (beach rescue unit) to pull them to shore and then pick them up with a tow truck but this thing with all four wheels locked up was just too much of a pull.”

The ultimate fate of this pony is unknown but there’s no question that it now has a story more extreme and more interesting than most of the mall crawling Broncos across the country could ever hope to live.

Thanks to Lee Foss of Island Towing for the pictures