Question about stuck spare

Hang on. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to attaching pictures. This is a picture of the hoist with it in the locked position on the safety lock. Notice the 'cam' shaped piece near the center of the pic, that is sort of pointed down. When it is in the unlocked position the flat on the cam will be on the bottom. If the cam on your hoist is positioned like the one in the picture, get a piece of rod, stick it up through the spare wheel and tap/pound/beat the cam to get it up into the unlocked position. Make sure the spare is not lowered when doing this.

This is what it looks like when the safety lock is in the unlocked position

A friend of mine just had a similar problem on Wednesday. He blew a right rear tire in the 2nd left most lane of a 5 lane each way expressway doing about 65 mph. When it blew he did a 360 degree spin and ended up in the left most lane. He got it got to the very narrow center shoulder up against a concrete wall. This was in the Chicago suburbs where 3 Interstates and one State highway al merge together. He had no room to get out and change it himself. To make matters worse they had a Chicago shutdown and re-routed traffic for miles around to the suburbs due to a 24 year old Police Woman's Funeral. There were hundreds of police cars from many states around attending. So our cars were being rerouted down the expressways where he was. All of the Helper trucks were being re-tasked to block off interstates in Chicago for the funeral.

After about 2 hours a State Trooper who was not attendinng the funeral stopped and tried to help change his tire. They could not get the spare down from under the bed. The cop gave up and left him there for the Highway helpers truck. After 5.5 hours sitting there, the helper truck arrived, got the spare down, and installed it in about 5 minutes. My friend did not know how he got it down other than he had a rod and a hammer underneath the bed.

My friend, BTW, is 81 years old and walks with a cane. It would have been a bit much for him to change the tire without all of the added traffic and Illinois drivers harassing him.

I came through there about 1 hour after he left and traffic was still a mess about 6.5 hours after this all started.