Call it the story of the Little Wrangler That Could. A British man has been dubbed a hero and blessed with an award for using his 20-year-old Jeep Wrangler to wrangle a 44-ton semi-truck out of a snowbank this winter, clearing the way for an ambulance in the midst of transporting a patient.
The Jeep owner, who boasts the arguably apropos name of Mark Blessed, was named one of United Kingdom radio station Pirate FM’s Local Heroes Award winners at an April 5th ceremony, after being nominated for his work freeing the giant truck and several other stuck vehicles from Old Man Winter’s frigid fingers in the Cornwall area of England during a night when a series of sudden snowstorms pounded the region.
“Mark really stood out as the epitome of a good neighbor,” Pirate FM award ceremony organizer Holly Day said.
For his part, Blessed seemed to accept the award with the humility you’d expect of a British man who drives an old Wrangler with a soft top during the winter.
“Somehow my little Jeep managed to tow a 40-tonne lorry and let him go on his way,” said Blessed. (For the unit-confused: 40 “tonnes,” or metric tons, works out to 44 Imperial ones.)
“So many people were standing and cheering,” he said. “It just goes to show how one little thing that you do affects so many different people along the way.”
As a salute to the vehicular heroism of Blessed and his Wrangler (and, no doubt, the wonderful publicity it provided to Fiat Chrysler’s SUV-crafting brand), Jeep’s UK branch sent the Cornwall man a new cover for the aft-mounted spare tire of his loyal TJ-generation Wrangler, among other pieces of Jeep-related gear.
