10 of the biggest semi truck screw ups of all time
Sometimes you really have to feel sorry for truckers; while we may have our screw ups at work, the poor truck driver makes his on the open road. Large or amusing mistakes get shown on the evening news.
Whether it's the driver's fault, a mechanical malfunction, or just Karma, some screw ups just make us laugh. We present ten of the biggest semi truckscrew ups of all time.
10. BEER; AN OVERVIEW
It seems that beer trucks are among the most screw-up prone vehicles of all time. We're not making any kind of value judgment here, we're just saying. All of these oopses occurred in 2009, four in the month of June alone.
Trucks carrying loads of Miller (twice), Miller Lite, Coors, Bud Lite, one lime-flavored beer, and three generics, catch fire, run off the road, overturn, crash into bridges, ditches, swamps, flip over, hit power lines, and give cops, EMTs, and road crews a lot of overtime; after which they go home, put their feet up, and reach for...a beer???
9. HAMBURGER PATTIES
Just before dawn, a truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into a barrier, flipped over, and spilled thousands of pounds of hamburger patties all over the northbound I15. Traffic had to wait for a couple of hours, a situation not unlike getting hamburgers at the drive-through.
8. CHICKENS
3,000 chickens were being hauled down the A80, one of Scotland's busiest highways. The lorry (UK word for semi truck) jack knifed and sent chickens flying everywhere. Police not only spent over five hours rounding up the birds, they issued twenty citations to motorists who took cell phone pictures of the scene while driving.
7. LOTTERY TICKETS
3.5 million lottery tickets were damaged with fire, water, and flame retardant when the rear axle of the truck transporting them caught fire. The messed-up tickets were all over the road after the mishap. Then the Florida Lottery officials canceled all the tickets, in case someone found one intact. Typical.
6. CONDOMS
Two trucks collided on Canada's Highway 401. One, carrying 250 kilos of condoms, lost its load, snarling traffic for hours. The other, presumably hauling better condoms, kept it.
5. DECOMPOSING ENTRAILS
Is anyone aware that trucks hauling decomposing animal parts and outdated meat aren't required by law to cover their loads? Well, there aren't. A trucker had to slam on the brakes and 500 pounds of animal products shifted up and over his cab, and onto the freeway.
4. GRAHAM CRACKERS
This story really isn't really about the eighteen-wheeler that dumped its load of graham crackers all over a Dallas freeway. It's about the people who crossed open traffic lanes to make off with arm loads of said crackers. One grandmother reported that she got enough for herself and all her grandkids.
3. SEX TOYS
An English lorry filled with compressed paper and sex toys burst into flames when it's brakes overheated. One blow-up doll was rescued, but most of the other cargo, that included whips and plastic breasts, wasn't.
2. BEES
A truck hauling 7,000 hives containing seventeen million bees was involved in a collision. Many of the angry bees escaped, stinging emergency workers. Fire hoses were used to encourage the bees to fly away.
1. EXPLOSIVES
A truck carrying thirty five tons of explosives rolled over on a Utah highway. The driver and passenger were lucky to escape before the truck exploded. The blast crater was thirty feet deep and seventy feet wide. Concrete barriers were hurled hundreds of feet in the air, and railroad ties were twisted by the impact. Amazingly, there were no fatalities.
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