This brief first appeared in the Stowe Reporter on April 13.
Stowe Rotary Club launched an online fundraiser this spring asking folks to guess the day and hour the first truck gets stuck in Smugglers Notch, the mountain pass connecting Stowe and Cambridge.
Club members thought it would be a great way to raise a little money for its scholarship fund and poke a little fun at a perpetual conundrum. The winner who picks the closest date and hour will receive 50 percent of the proceeds. The remaining funds will be used to support Stowe Rotary’s scholarship program.
Each guess costs $10.
“Our goal is to spark community discussion about the problem and turn a negative thing into something positive, all while having some fun,” club president James Hodge said about the online betting pool.
So far, the pool is up to $2,430 and growing.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation has an internal word for when a tractor-trailer wedges itself on the winding mountain road between Stowe and Jeffersonville, or what some call a “stuckage.”
And, while they’re working on a handful of ways to prevent stuck trucks, it remains a persistent problem. From 2009 to 2021, an average of 8.6 trucks have gotten stuck in the Notch each year, according to data from the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
That number decreased in 2021 to only five stuck semis.
Guesses will be honored up to 24 hours prior to the first truck getting stuck. Go to stowerotary.org/stuck-truck-raffle and click on the calendar to place your dates and times.
