I thought for seconds on end over that witty headline. Oddly, it's true according to this Salt Lake newspaper report (h/t dmb):
Motorists on Interstate 15 were impeded by a piles of hamburgers after a truck spilled a load of the patties, blocking the northbound lanes for four hours. The driver of a tractor-trailer carrying 40,000 pounds of hamburger patties dozed off around 5 a.m., said Utah Highway Patrol trooper Cameron Roden. The truck driver's rig drifted to the left side of the freeway near 2300 North and crashed into a wall and an overhead sign, which ripped open his trailer, spilling hamburger over the north and southbound lanes of the interstate...A second truck spill east of Morgan caused minor delays. Before 7:30 a.m., a truck was heading westbound on Interstate 84 about a half-mile east of Morgan... The truck slipped off to the left, hit a guardrail, and flipped over on its side. The impact split the truck open, spilling Fat Tire Beer being shipped from Colorado, Roden said.
Fortunately for glib gits like me, no one was injured. The whole load of Fat Tire beer was lost.
Comments
Knut Albert - February 19, 2009 7:29 AM
I am always puzzled by various British and American units for weight and volume. Since when did they start measuring beer in pounds? Is this something they do in Utah?
And maybe, just maybe, some of the beer was rescued, it depends on wether it was in one tank or in more convenient put in the trunk unit...
A thousand years ago, I worked in a transport company, loading ships going northward from Trondheim. There were some rumours about pallets of booze, where an experienced driver of a forklift aimed at the middle of the bottlenecks , managing to slice them off. The contents were then swiftly poured into whatever was at hand. And, as long as the bottles were broken with the screwtop seal still intact, the alcohol was reported lost.
Joe S. - February 19, 2009 8:14 AM
I find this story very sad, having a soft spot for both hamburgers and Fat Tire.
Knut, beer is not usually weighed in pounds... but trucks are. They've got to weigh in at various points on the highway, so it's possible and probably necessary to know how much the cargo weighs. But it would have been more illustrative to write how many bottles worth of beer that was...
Jordan - February 19, 2009 11:51 AM
Oh, the humanity. There are so many inferior beers that should have met that fate instead.