I think this fits the OP…
It didn’t happen to me, but rather to my dad. He owns a mid-70’s Chevrolet 4x4 pickup, single cab with a bench seat and an automatic transmission. One day he had to go pick up my brother from work and take him and one of my brother’s coworkers across town to their house (I don’t remember why… knowing my brother he had likely did something stupid and wrecked his own car the weekend before).
So they’re driving through the city and come to a stop in one of the left turn lanes in a busy intersection. The light turns green and… the pickup won’t move. Engine revs but the pickup simply won’t move. Dad tries different gears, still no go. By this time traffic is backed up behind them. A couple of drivers stop and my dad, brother, coworker, and the other drivers push the pickup off the road and into a Walgreens parking lot that’s on the corner of the intersection. By this time, of course, traffic has been thoroughly snarled and a cop had come by to see what was causing half the town to come to a standstill. Dad has to call my mom to come pick them up, and the pickup is left to sit in the Walgreen’s parking lot overnight.
The next day my dad borrows another friend’s pickup, drives to the local U-Haul, rents a tow dolly, and with my brother’s and a couple of his friends’ help gets the Chevrolet loaded onto the tow dolly. (This of course had to be done in a full parking lot, making the manager at Walgreen thoroughly pissed off.)
Dad tows the Chevy home, where he has a pole barn that he can work on it under cover. I don’t remember what all he did to diagnose the problem, but he went so far as to go to Harbor Freight and purchase a transmission jack and start searching online for a rebuild transmission.
A few days into this whole process, he has an epiphany. He goes out to the barn, hops in the cab, fires up the engine, and checks the 4x4 selector lever, which is on the floor between the driver and passenger seats.
Yep. It was in neutral. My brother’s friend, while riding in the center seat had somehow bumped the shift lever into neutral. My dad popped it back into gear and all was right in the world. Three or four days of aggravation and frustration, several hundred dollars for the dolly rental and the transmission jack… all for nothing.
I think he still has that transmission jack.