Dump truck drives into ditch along Perryville Road

Published 4:03 pm Monday, July 2, 2018

 

A dump truck filled with sand and weighing in at almost 40 tons wrecked along Perryville Road Monday, causing traffic-flow issues at the scene for around three hours.

The dump truck was headed east into Danville when it traveled into a ditch on the eastbound side of the road, less than a minute away from the Danville Bypass. The driver said his truck’s systems stopped functioning, said Mike Wilder, director of Boyle County Emergency Management.

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“He stated that his truck just quit on him and he didn’t have any power steering or brakes,” Wilder said Monday, shortly after the scene was cleared.

The driver tried to get the truck to the side of the road, but the weight shifted and it wound up in the ditch, Wilder said.

The Boyle County Sheriff’s Office and Boyle County Emergency Management worked the scene. That involved a lot of waiting: Wilder said a tow truck had to be brought from Elizabethtown to try to right the massive dump truck, which weighed 79,000 pounds including its load of sand. But the first tow truck wasn’t big enough, and a second tow truck, also from Elizabethtown, had to be called in.

Traffic was down to one lane at times while responders worked, with eastbound and westbound traffic alternating in the one available lane.

Wilder said once the dump truck was out of the ditch, it could not be driven because the power steering system was still not functioning. The dump truck was towed to the Big Lots parking lot near the bypass, then on to Elizabethtown for repairs, he said.