There was a rollover incident involving a truckload of gallon cans of Bush’s Baked Beans on US-321, Newport Highway, outside Greenville, Tennessee. The incident occurred on Monday, Feb. 2 at 7:30 a.m. when a truck pulling a fully-laden trailer supposedly drove onto the soft road shoulder and began to roll. The site of the incident is only 30 miles from the Chestnut Hill processing plant.
The truck hit a utility pole, causing it to snap apart. The trailer then ripped open, spilling the beans that barreled into a home nearby.
Greeneville/Greene County, Tennessee Office of Emergency Management & HLS was able to bring in a portable traffic light and open one lane of Newport Highway around 3:30 p.m. that afternoon. The scene was cleared at approximately 5:30 p.m.
Rural roads can be extremely dangerous to heavily loaded trucks
My personal history of hauling beans goes back to the beginning of my trucking career. It was my “home load” to get me off the main freight lanes and down into South Georgia.
Most of the bean loads are max-weight, 45,000 pounds, and then some. That much weight on a rural road can easily lead to disaster if you allow your truck or trailer to drift onto a soft shoulder.
Typical grassy shoulders are not weight-bearing at all, and will immediately give way under the weight of the big rig as it rolls across. The sudden drop can cause a load, especially anything with surge potential (i.e. a truckload of canned beans), to immediately roll onto its side.
Drivers need to pay attention as they drive on narrow roads and take caution on curves so as to not let the trailer drift out of the lane. Grassy and dirt shoulders are not made to be driven on, especially when you are hauling loaded trailers.
Read more by Rooster and follow me here! Need to reach out to me, send me an email!
Sign up for the Back The Truck Up Newsletter!
Listen to the Back The Truck Up Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!
