Wife called down to my computer room, shortly after noon I believe it was, and said:"Come here looks like there is something in the road out front: Guess there was! Seems the driver of the county truck got a little too far to the right and when front right wheel dropped off the pavement and he tried to pull back to the left the load of fine stone shifted and laid truck right over. Kind of blocked traffic! Driver was lucky and only had a bad scraped up left elbow and possibly some other damage to left arm, no spurting blood just a little red stuff leaking down his hand and a hole in sweatshirt by elbow with a good amount of red on it! Time to call in "Big Red": No sense i calling in the little guys! After a good amount of preparation and rigging it was back on all ten: They only towed it a few hundred yards down the road to get away from the clean up crew to load it on lowboy for the ride back to the county garage in Oswego, NY. They used a state plow to move the clean stone off the highway and ran a sweeper over the area a few times to be able to reopen the road. Tomorrow they are planning on coming back to finish clean up of the area that fuel got spilled on and they already dropped off a load of clean fill for that part of the job and put down the absorbent "snakes" and covered the area with plastic after scrubbing the road with speedi-dry.
Not sure if I can attach a video from Facebook here but I'll try: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1696979897012027 Try clicking on it where it says" Watch on Facebook "and see if it runs for you, does for me. If that works you can see this was not that tow truck operators first time doing this work!
Wow Ken, As often as sh*t happens on the road in front of your place, you should install a camera that runs 24/7. You will have 1,000,000 hit videos quite regular. Worst part of this one, is being that it is a county truck, you will get to share the expense of the wreck via your taxes.
That infamous "curve" strikes again!
That looks like a huge box on the truck and helped prevent a lot worse damage. Maybe the driver dozed off for a couple seconds?
Well good news on that part is the truck is from a different county than the one I pay taxes to!
One good thing about this accident is there were no vehicles coming from the other direction! Early afternoon is one of the "slow" periods on this road. Might get interesting today as the guys who are doing the clean-up of fuel oil contaminated dirt said they will be doing a lane closure for their safety. We also made page two of the Syracuse paper: ELBRIDGE Truck leaks fuel after rollover An Oswego County dump truck loaded with stone dust rolled onto its side and leaked 40 to 50 gallons of diesel fuel Monday afternoon on Route 321, Mottville Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Baker said. The crash closed Route 321 — a commuter route to Skaneateles — from Campbell to Kingston roads, for around three hours. The dump truck was about a mile north of Hanson Aggregates, which sells crushed stone, when the accident happened about 1:20 p.m. The driver appeared to have overcorrected before the dump truck rolled onto its side, Baker said. About 20 volunteer firefighters from Mottville, Skaneateles and Marcellus responded to the scene. Firefighters helped close the road and contain the diesel fuel leak, Baker said. The driver’s boss came to the scene and took him to the hospital, Baker said. Firefighters described his injuries as “a couple cuts and bruises.” Catie O’Toole Copyright © 2018 Syracuse Post Standard 3/13/2018
"leaked 40-50 gal of fuel".. That's abit of an exaggeration don't ya think?? "20 volunteers"?? doesn't anybody work in your town?? Lol Just like the media to blow things outta proportion.. Fuel was probably dribbling out of the vent cap & there was probably 8 guys on-scene.. THAT CURVE has some good stories..
That estimate might not be too far off. Not all of them were right at the scene of the accident. They had people stationed at the two side roads about a 1/4 mile away in either direction to keep anyone from this section of highway and very possibly just down each of the side roads to direct traffic on to a parallel road to the on the truck was on. They also had a tanker sitting there with hose crew all set to go if there was a fire, say a shorted batter when truck was being righted. Also a EMT truck was on scene for a part of the time. As for fuel leakage while I do think the 40-50 gal estimate was high the fuel was coming out a pretty good maybe 1/4 inch stream along with a little smaller trickle from the vent on hydraulic tank. As for nobody working around here. Many of the Volunteer Firemen in the area are local farmers or small contractors and also I do know several of the larger employers in the area allow workers who are volunteers to respond to any kind of emergency. They figure it is a good thing as if there is ever a problem at one of their plants the only people to respond will be those same volunteers! On top of that several firefighters in these volunteer departments are retired or semi-retired people. Add to it that where my house sits there are at least four departments within a ten mile circle! Nothing against paid fire fighters, they have a tough job for sure. But when you have a volunteer department like those around here show up on a scene the knowledge and skills you have at your call are very helpful. You can have electricians, plumbers, farm equipment operators, guys who deal with farm animals, carpenters, mechanics and on and on. Those skills help not only in fighting the fire or what ever the emergency is but also help save property from total loss. Just having someone who can jump on a John Deere tractor and move it from the scene not only ca save the tractor but also remove 40 or 50 gallons of fuel oil from adding to the fire.
Please don't take this comment as hostile, but the snippet about nobody working is a bit sharp. I'm approaching 10 years on my volunteer fire/rescue squad and we would be ecstatic if we could have 20 guys respond to a call, any call. All the employers in my town are completely understanding of volunteers needing to respond, and allow them to leave, no questions asked. Maybe should have just let it go, but I do get defensive when it comes to volunteer departments, and had to raise an eyebrow.
Not to belabor this too much but that's why I went into so much detail in the second half of my reply! One point I would add is that when a call first goes out no one knows for sure what they will find when they get to the scene. This time they were lucky as driver was able to crawl out the passengers door with just a little help for one person. It would have been very easy for it to have gone another way! Just the other day on I-81 a few miles away a sudden snow squall came along and what probably started as one minor fender bender between two cars started a domino effect accident that kept going till there were 30 cars stacked up. No serious injuries but who knew when the first call may have went in for help. And for any one out there that equates "volunteer" with "amateur", well Shiimmy and his buddies would probably like to set them straight!
This is a pretty good summary of what I was thinking this morning, and I'm glad you posted. I'm sure there are other guys in the service on here, and it can be a sensitive topic. That call would have gone something like this: [whatever squad], Please respond to a overturned dumptruck at [M.P. X] on Route 321. Driver condition unknown, please notify dispatch when you receive this page. Now, hearing that, on a busy highway, we would roll rescue, fire apparatus, and at least a couple of support rigs with personnel for traffic control. That being said, their would be 6-8 guys on the rescue crew, 6 guys on the engine, at least two in each other rig, and then 2 more guys in command. I'm not posting this to prove any points, only for knowledge gain for people that are not familiar with emergency services.
Not sure if it still is, but in the little town of Center, ND, the volunteer rescue and fire personnel was over 80% women in the heyday of building the local power plants. Most of the men worked in the coal mines or power plants and were often unavailable to respond to an emergency. Them women took first place in the state competition as the best trained and most able volunteer fire department in the state for 3 out of 5 years back in the late 70s to early 80s. They also saved a number of lives and handled anything thrown at them. Small town volunteers are among my hero's.
Glad this wasn't more serious. I flopped an old Autocar 10 wheel dump way back when getting out of the way of an oncoming truck. I pulled as far right as I could and the shoulder gave way, load shifted and over she went. They brought the company John Deere 844 and had the truck back on its feet, the mechanic checked the fluid levels and I continued the day in the truck!
I drive 321 everyday to get to and from work. Glad the driver was relatively unharmed. 321 sure does see its fair share of accidents.
Well then I'm sure you have seen the orange cones and pile of dirt they dumped down by the road! Don't think they will be doing any thing about the clean up for a few days with the fresh load of stone we have! This accident got me thinking about one from maybe 15 or so years back almost the exact same place! Very similar but the little blue, I believe Ford, single axle dumper. That guy did a bit better and got all the way over, wheels up! dumped his load right in the middle highway. the sheriff called up to the quarry and loader operator, who had just loaded the truck, and myself in our RD685 were dispatched to clean up the stone from the road. Boss took this picture just after I had gone back with the Mack to put stone back in stock to sell over again!
OUCH, did anyone inspect the underside mechanicals while it was over? Best time to get that done!!
I work for our local county highway department. If that was one of ours, our insurance pool pays for the repairs. Technically the folks that buy gas pay for our insurance but it doesn't come out of our operating funds.
I grew up on a dead end road with a big turn around. Where the turn around transitioned back into to a straight road the crown was a little excessive. That was how the grader op made it for 20+ years. That little bit extra crown became a problem when it snowed. In my life it claimed a ups truck, a fedex truck, the trash truck and my school bus. Twice. With me in it. When the township paved the road their rubber tire roller was one of those tractor conversions filled with gravel. That went all the way over after the guy jumped ship.