7 Strange Things Trucks Have Spilled (Besides 40,000 Pounds of Edy's Ice Cream)
Earlier tonight, the AP reported that 40,000 pounds of Edy's ice cream had spilled from a semitrailer in Fort Wayne, Indiana. (Merry Christmas!) With help from friends at TruckSpills.com, we found some other crazy things that have littered the highway.
1. 40,000 Pounds of Sausage
Back in March of 2009, a two-truck crash in Sheboygan County scattered 40,000 pounds of meat products on Interstate 43 in Wisconsin. Mmmm, meat products.
2. 5,000 Gallons of Molasses
If any town might prepare for a sticky truck spill, you'd expect it to be Sugar Land, Texas. That's where, in 2008, motorists came face to face with a monstrous wave of molasses. 5,000 gallons spilled when the truck carrying it jack-knifed and rolled over. The cleanup took eight hours and 8 trillion handy wipes.
3. A 56-Foot Whale
(Warning: Disgusting photo ahead!)
The Taiwanese city of Tainan looked like the set of a slasher movie after a 56-foot sperm whale exploded on its way through town. At the time, the whale was dead, having beached itself earlier, and was being carted via flatbed truck to a research facility for autopsy. As the whale lay rotting in the sun, gases began to build up inside its carcass until they detonated in a flood of whale guts.
4. Lots of Keystone Light
In 2008, when a driver lost control of his rig on a Colorado interstate ramp, the capsized trailer was shorn open like a beer can . . . full of beer cans. That's right: this particular truck was carrying twelve-packs of smooth-drinking Keystone Light. Keystone markets itself as "Always Smooth, Even When You're Not"--like, say, when you take a ramp too fast and crash your tractor-trailer. Fortunately, the "uninjured" beer was recovered and loaded on another truck, leaving me to imagine that a poor beer-lover somewhere bought himself a very foamy twelve-pack.
5. $2 Million in Change
As tough as the economy is, maybe people should start combing the highways for loose change. In 2004, a wrecked armored truck spilled $2 million in coins on the New Jersey Turnpike. In 2005, an armored truck caught fire and splashed $800,000 in scalding quarters on an Alabama road. And in 2008, a truck carrying 3.5 million nickels (worth about $185,000) to the Miami Federal Reserve dumped its load after a violent wreck that killed the driver.
6. A Ship Engine
What do you do when a 200-ton marine engine destined for a San Diego shipyard flips off its flatbed? Get a crane. Actually, get three cranes--and a new road. The massive engine pancaked cars and even shoved one below the pavement. True to Murphy's law, the truck driver involved went to the wrong address, realized his mistake, backed up, hit a curb, and—kaboom! For a cool description of how engineers put the engine back on a truck, check out the original article on the crash.
7. 35,000 Pounds of Explosives
In 2005, a truck carrying 35,000 pounds of explosives rolled over on a Utah highway and (in classic A-Team fashion) blew up moments after the driver and passenger escaped. The blast dug a crater 30 feet deep and 70 feet across. It also propelled concrete road barriers hundreds of feet in the air and twisted nearby railroad tracks like straws. Fortunately, no one died.
Portions of this article originally appeared in 2009. Visit TruckSpills.com for many more.
