When I first heard that a truck had dumped 40,000 pounds of sausage on Wisconsin highway, my first thought was, “Mmmmm, sausage.” My second thought was, “That has to be the weirdest truck spill ever.” But it’s not. With help from friends at Truckspills.com, we found some truck spills you would definitely rather read about than encounter.
1. 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.
2. A 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.
3. Beer
Last year, 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.
4. Money
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 just last year, 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
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The town where I grew up had a roundabout-type intersection that seemed to confuse some truck drivers, and once every five years or so, one of the trucks would overturn and spill its contents on the town square.
One time, it was a candy truck. The courthouse lawn was littered with candy bars of varying descriptions, and the driver calmly suggested that anyone who wanted to take home the expelled contents was welcome to do so. (They wouldn’t be able to sell it, anyway.) Needless to say, we had candy for months afterward.
And also needless to say, our local dentist bought a Mercedes the next spring. Coincidence?
posted by Sandy Wood on 4-2-2009 at 11:06 am
Wasn’t there an accident in Denver at the old interchange of I-25 and I-70 that involved real (as in filled with explosives) missiles back in the 80′s or something like that? I google’d and couldn’t find a story on it.
posted by RobertSeattle on 4-2-2009 at 11:13 am
Cincinnati, OH, a few years ago, had a really gross one. A truck hauling restaurant waste – yeah, grease, trimmed fat, leftovers, generally rotten foodstuff – overturned on the interstate. It was nasty, and took them a LONG time to clean up.
posted by Steve C on 4-2-2009 at 11:16 am
the awesome part about the Cincinnati grease/fat spill was that they cleaned it up using Dawn dishwashing liquid–I always thought it was a nefarious P&G marketing plan
posted by JC on 4-2-2009 at 12:40 pm
I just have to be contrary here and point out that any beer lover should probably not be buying Keystone Light, foamy or not :D
posted by Fruppi on 4-2-2009 at 12:43 pm
I do believe there was once a matter of a certain 30,000 lbs . . .
of Bananas!
posted by EMStoveken on 4-2-2009 at 12:46 pm
I’m from Malaysian and once we had a truck carrying durians tip over on the road next to our school.
This happened right around recess. Kids actually rushed out and tried to grab some of the fruit before being warned off by teachers and other motorists (who wanted the fruit for themselves!).
The durian is affectionately called the king of fruit. Also known as the only food that Andrew Zimmern (of Bizzare Food fame) can’t stomach.
Durians look like a ball of sharp spikes, has a pungent aroma and yellow, custard-like flesh. Banned from most hotels and on public transportation in most south east asian countries. Look up “durian” on google/wikipedia… yum!!
posted by AIZ on 4-2-2009 at 12:58 pm
There was a semi that overturned with double-stuff Oreos. Can’t remember where, but worth a mention.
posted by lizhot on 4-2-2009 at 12:59 pm
Once, on CA HWY 80, a truck full of bees overturned. BEES!
I would seriously hate to be the guy who has to clean up that mess.
posted by Liz on 4-2-2009 at 1:21 pm
I remember a couple of years ago a truck carrying orange juice turned over on the highway dumping its entire load.
Our brilliant local news anchors were telling everyone a truck overturned with citric acid in it. There is a reason why local news is such good fodder for You Tube.
posted by Healeygirl on 4-2-2009 at 1:22 pm
Growing up in Texas, it was not uncommon to hear of a cattle hauler tipping over in one of the highway interchanges in Dallas or Ft. Worth. And yes, they would have to have horseback riders go out to round up the cargo off of the highway ramps…
posted by Karl on 4-2-2009 at 1:28 pm
This is a true story. I live just outside of Saint Paul, Minnesota. One morning on the way to work, there was a detour on 694 because a truck had tipped carrying thousands of pounds of bird-seed, which had spilled out into the road. Not even a week later, the road was closed because a truck carrying turkeys flipped, and there were live turkeys running all over the road. (Must have been attracted by the bird seed). Several days later, a truck carrying a load of water bottles tipped, leaving light blue bottles all over the road. (The turkeys must needed water after all of the seed.) True story.
posted by Ophelia on 4-2-2009 at 1:46 pm
In the mid 70′s there was a tremendous snowstorm my freshman year of college in a small town in northwestern Indiana.
We heard there was an overturned Miller Lite beer truck out by the interstate. A bunch of people in a bunch of cars drove out there and looted the semi. We drank frozen Miller Lite, by the six pack, for days.
posted by Sue on 4-2-2009 at 1:50 pm
Actually just today I heard on the radio that a truck somewhere here in So Cal crashed and dumped its load of chicken fat. It was close to 1000 lbs. of chicken fat.
Also I remember one time my Grandpa came upon a train that had turned over close to their house. It had spilled its load of ICE CREAM! Needless to say we had ice cream for months. Funny thing is that I never saw that type of ice cream again :(
posted by Colene on 4-2-2009 at 2:15 pm
It was just after dark when the truck started down the hill that leads into Scranton Pennsylvania. Carrying 30000 pounds… of bananas. Yes there were thirty thousand pounds… of bananas.
posted by Nathan Miller on 4-2-2009 at 3:29 pm
Another Cincinnati one. Last year, a truck carrying a train (locomotive) crashed into a pillar of a bridge on I-275, requiring closure of the bridge for months.
posted by Jackal24 on 4-2-2009 at 3:32 pm
Another Cincinnati one. Last year, a truck carrying a train (locomotive) crashed into a support pillar for a bridge on I-275 requiring closure of the bridge for months.
posted by jackal24 on 4-2-2009 at 3:34 pm
When I was in training for being a volunteer fireman I was told a story about a truck load of baby chicks being dumped on the highway when the truck flipped. The responders picked up what they could but after doing that for an hour or so they just started stepping on them. I doubt it is a true story but you never nknow.
posted by Scott-O on 4-2-2009 at 3:53 pm
River guides on the Ocoee River told our rafting group that they call a part of the whitewaters “Hostess Falls” (or something like)because a truck full of Twinkies and Ding Dongs overturned, spilling its contents into the River. They said that for a long time, there were snack cakes just floating around waiting to be snatched by hungry rafters.
posted by maggie on 4-2-2009 at 4:18 pm
Speaking of Cincinnati, last year we also had a semi drop an 80-ton diesel locomotive, which had enough momentum to crash through the support columns of a highway overpass.
posted by Matt on 4-2-2009 at 4:45 pm
In 2006, a truck full of exotic animals got into a wreck on a two lane highway in East Texas. The main cargo was penguins. Four penguins died, but the remaining 24 started wondering the roads. The link is to an article with pictures.
posted by Jacob on 4-2-2009 at 4:47 pm
What, no mention of the booster rocket for an intercontinental ballistic missile? The truck carrying it flipped over in North Dakota and it sat there for at least a week. This happened last August.
posted by Roxie on 4-2-2009 at 5:34 pm
About 10 years ago, a truckload of frozen chickens flipped and dumped its cargo onto the interstate. Had it been winter, it wouldnt have been so bad, but it was mid-August in Alabama, and those things started stinking something AWFUL after baking on the interstate. I was pregnant at the time and it was all I could do to keep from vomiting in traffic.
posted by sparks on 4-2-2009 at 5:48 pm
Well of all strange coincidences. Today in Savannah Ga, a container truck carrying 2000 pounds of raw sausage slammed on brakes to avoid hitting a car that cut him off. The load of sausage spilled all over the road. It was lunchtime, so traffic was heavy, and it’s been pouring down rain for the past 24 hours or so. “It was gross, smelly, and caused more than a few detours”, according to today’s Savannahnow.com.
posted by Vickey on 4-2-2009 at 7:18 pm
Speaking if Cincinnati yet again…
About 7 or 8 years ago, a few days before Christmas, a semi full of ice cream overturned, dumping its load.
Also, on I-471 a couple years back, a truck of spoiled meat, mostly hot dogs, overturned.
bad day for those left to clean it up.
posted by Brad on 4-2-2009 at 7:43 pm
A few years ago I saw a truck full of beer tipped over on a highway ramp. The beer had not survived the fall, and the entire hill was covered in it.
posted by Sarah Bob on 4-2-2009 at 8:09 pm
EMStoveken & Nathan Miller
In harmony now!
I believe that truck took out nineteen telephone poles, and a few other things before the driver lost his head…
posted by Jess on 4-2-2009 at 8:20 pm
. . . not to mention an arm or two.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 4-2-2009 at 10:19 pm
In the 80′s in Idaho, I witnessed a truck with several big black bulls tip over on I5 at 55 mph. The bulls got right up and ran out into the desert.
In Eugene OR there was spill of beet slurry from the cannery. 2 feet deep of thick red goo, no one knew what it was for a few hours.
posted by skook on 4-2-2009 at 11:03 pm
Chickens – thousands of them, live, clucking, and feathers everywhere. Last summer in Buffalo, NY, a semi tipped with chickens headed to slaughter. After the spill, the SPCA declared an emergency, rescued the chickens, nursed them, and then returned them to the company – who’s gonna slaughter them. Ahh, Buffalo…
posted by monkykungfu on 4-2-2009 at 11:45 pm
So I went to look up that chicken fat one, and the first line of the article was clearly written by some joker: “Chicken fat clogged a major traffic artery Tuesday…”
Click on my name — the link goes there. interstate-540/
posted by Mark on 4-3-2009 at 2:15 am
Sorry ’bout that excess text there. I found another story about a big chicken fat spill in Arkansas just this week, so my name goes there this time.
posted by Mark on 4-3-2009 at 2:17 am
….and there’s hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.
posted by roxtar on 4-3-2009 at 5:09 am
Ok, I’ve read all the comments… I think I can beat them. Ever heard of a gut wagon? :)
My wife was driving through an intersection where a tractor trailer had overturned having just picked up a full load of discarded “parts” from a local slaughter house.
Guts everywhere. Hearts, intestines, blood…you name it. She said it was like a gruesome horror flick.
I guess someone called the nearby hot dog factory and told them their ingredients wouldn’t be arriving that day. :)
posted by Aaron on 4-3-2009 at 11:09 am
I know a few people mentioned but I have to represent seeing as I live there…
30,000 pounds of bananas!
posted by aj on 4-3-2009 at 11:22 am
i have witnessed a mayonnaise spill
i was with my uncle at the time, and he absolutely hates mayonnaise and with gag at the word, let alone looking at an entire truck full spilt on the highway
it was really funny to watch him react
posted by matt on 4-4-2009 at 9:42 pm
I live in West Monroe, Louisiana and two years ago there was a huge chicken fat spill on the interstate. Horrible smell for days!
posted by jen brister on 4-4-2009 at 11:10 pm
Just to add to the ‘yuck’ factor, I can add one I was personally responsible for. A few years ago I was hauling chicken ‘waste’ from a farm here in Iowa to a farm in Missouri to be used as fertilizer. While I was going down the road the, the pressure from the load shifted and popped the safety latches on my tailgate. SPLOOOOSH! 16 tons of semi-liquid chicken sh!t spread for a half-mile down the highway.
The kick was at about the exact same time, another of out trucks with the same material had its gate pop open in the middle of a truck stop parking lot.
posted by TJ Mass on 4-5-2009 at 2:31 am
6 != 8
posted by anon on 4-5-2009 at 10:46 pm
Couple of years back there was a truck spill on the motorway [that's freeway for all you Americans] near where my in-laws live…
10,000 gallons of industrial glue.
Only way to clean it up was wait until it hardened and replace the entire top surface of the road.
posted by Sy on 4-5-2009 at 11:08 pm
People who drink Keystone Light are not beer lovers – they are self-abusers.
posted by Dylan on 4-6-2009 at 1:40 am
Can’t believe nobody has mentioned this one: Condom truck tips, spills load
posted by Jeremy on 4-6-2009 at 10:17 am
RobertSeattle is right, back in the early ’80s a truck hauling missles from the now defunct Rock Flats flipped over @ 25&70. It made the news, but only briefly….hmmm
posted by Bubba Gump on 4-6-2009 at 6:17 pm
dude representing sugar land right here! i live there and saw it happen it was weird im telling you
posted by CP on 4-7-2009 at 7:47 pm
Those are some wild pictures and stories. We had a truck full of cows overturn on the highway between Greensboro and Raleigh. The whole highway was closed down for hours and it was funny to watch the state tropers try and corral the cows. One of the cows got pissed and went after the troopers and put a big dent in one of their cars.
posted by Best headlight on 4-8-2009 at 1:22 am
While living in Atlanta we had a McDonald’s refrigerated cargo truck overturn on the interstate in the middle of the summer. The raw beef quickly began to thaw and stick to the road. The only way it could be removed was by scraping the road with a small bulldozer which lead to the road needing to be resurfaced.
Last week in my hometown of Huntsville a grain truck full of rape seed (what canola oil is made from) overturned and spilled all over the highway. This lead to a multiday cleanup as the warm road began rendering the very slick oil from the seeds.
posted by Brian on 4-8-2009 at 1:55 pm
When I was a kid in the early 1970s, I heard about an accident in a large city where Playboy magazines spilled out of a truck and all over the road. The men in the vicinity went crazy grabbing the latest issue for free!
posted by Gail on 4-9-2009 at 10:42 am
its not a semi tipping over, but the truck carrying the worlds largest coal bucket didn’t follow the suggested route and clipped the bottom out of an overpass in Madison, WI in 2006.
Similarly, it seems that a truck driver protesting the building of a concrete factory (to use the train tracks) in Oregon, WI drove through the train bridge. They finished fixing it this summer, a few years later, and rebuilt the bridge, but at least its possible for two vehicles to drive under it now.
posted by erin on 4-15-2009 at 2:52 pm
When i was in high school one of my jobs was working for a wrecker service cleaning up truck wrecks, ive seen oranges, diapers, 2×4′s, and toilets. but by far the worst was a truck load of suavitel fabric softener, we had to sort through all of it and save the jugs that werent busted and after about 6 hours of being in a trailer covered in the stuff i never want to use it… ever.
posted by Dayton Scott on 4-20-2009 at 10:57 pm
Probably 15 years ago my husband & I were driving from Chattanooga to Atlanta on I70. We watched as a semi in the center lane heading north very slowly tipped over. As it fell, the side ripped open and all these cows came tumbling out the side. It was surreal slow motion and the truck finally skidded to a stop on its side leaving a trail of cows in the median. Some were obviously dead. Some couldn’t stand or were just lying on their sides. Some were just standing stunned. I looked for it on the news that night but never saw any coverage.
posted by Rebekah on 4-24-2009 at 4:41 pm
About 15 years ago I was driving northbound on I5 in WA state. I was on my way home from work at about 1 in the morning through some dense fog. I started noticing some dim shapes in the road, and as I slowed down, I noticed something moving not only in the road but on the dividers as well. Turns out that a truck hauling live chickens had jackknifed just north of me and there were chickens everywhere, alive and dead, some caged some not. I vividly remember a chicken walking down the divider slowly, making me think of something like “Chickens in the mist”.
It remains one of the most surreal things I have witnessed.
posted by Mike on 4-26-2009 at 1:04 am
@RobertSeattle: Yes, a Navy torpedo fell off a flatbed at I-25 and I-70 in Denver, the “Mousetrap”. We all hoped at the time that it would explode and we’d get new roads built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousetrap_%28Denver%29
posted by Kevin on 9-1-2010 at 11:44 pm
Don’t be hatin the land of the sugar. Our roving gangs of soccer moms will run your ass off the road.
posted by bob on 9-4-2010 at 2:53 am
Can I please just add that that story about the exploded whale is about the most hilarious thing I have ever read! Whenever I think I am having a rough day at work, I just imagine that guy with a hose and a giant rotten whale in the background…. good times.
posted by J.Rummel on 9-23-2010 at 1:04 pm
anon posted but didn’t clarify what 6!=8 means, the poster said there would be 8 spills, however the title says 6 spills, adding the one before about sausage adds up to 7… (6!=8 means 6 does not equal 8 for those that didn’t know)
posted by Drayke on 11-7-2010 at 11:14 am
after a closer check on the list, there are 3 different truck spills involved under the subtitle for “money” added into the other 5 posts make a total of 8. While this does make the list complete from what the original poster said, the title still calls for 6, of which there is a total of 9 including the sausage truck prior to the list’s beginning.
posted by Drayke on 11-7-2010 at 11:18 am
The nickels were SO funny. (sorry the driver died, but the aftermath was hilarious.) The news kept showing people randomly pulling over on the side of the highway to pick up the coins, they had to put a state trooper there to stop the idiots from collecting the money.
posted by Jess on 1-21-2011 at 9:09 am