NFI truck accident on I80 near Williamsburg, IA?

We passed that the other day and were wondering the same thing. I googled the heck out of it trying to find mention of it somewhere and couldn't find a thing. It was right around mm 222. I can't wrap my head around how/why a truck would end up like that. From e/b we could also see that it looked like the reefer unit was burned out.

 

Truck was carried away by a roll of steel ln the reefer blocked by the pallets sudden stop and rolled forward sudden stop sudden death. Rip

 

A coil in a reefer?

A REEFER?! A Steel coil yea big and way heavy?

It's going to punch the front bulkhead, discard the cab clean off the frame and carefully mash it and everything and everyone inside to a mush. Then proceed forward running over anyone else in the path.

Please tell me that was a flatbed, not a van or reefer with a coil.

For engineering purposes, cabs are secured to the frame rails by a few bolts. Bolts in the front and airbags with bolts sometimes under the sleeper. Or whatever else. But relatively speaking against a monster coil loaded suicide style, it's just going to take that cab clean off. Whap!

 

You will be surprised what will come through the front. If given a sufficient impact that forces the tractor stopping instantly. The physics transfer to the trailer which now will try to hold whatever is in it. The cargo is usually going to want out. Due to the impact from a front the driver is pretty much dead or worse.

We had one decades ago in Frederick Md, right off 70, hit the ditch at the truckstop at a angle, came out twisted like a pretzel. The tractor wheels to the sky, van trailer wheels on the ground. I always regret not taking a picture of that one because generally when a tractor trailer rolls over onto the roof of your cab your survival chances fall pretty steeply.

 

Nice theory. Links?

 

This just gave me a sense of deadly deja vu because of my experience at Western Express hauling steel coil in the van trailers out of a certain plant in Norwich,Connecticut. We couldn't inspect the loads because the trailers were always preloaded and sealed(flatbed division didn't have this issue,for obvious reasons).