Ever wonder how food gets to your local supermarket or your favorite fast-food place? How it ends up with the wholesalers who sell it to delis and food trucks and fancy restaurants and anyone else who feeds us?
The foods we eat come — whether as raw materials, precooked ingredients, or finished dishes — from every part of the country and around the world, and they have to travel to our neighborhoods from their places of production somehow.
Trains carry some of these foods, and certain luxury items, such as caviar or fresh fish from foreign seas, might get transported by air. But the workhorses of food distribution, in America and elsewhere, are trucks, serious trucks — tractor trailers, big rigs, semis, 18-wheelers, tank trucks.
Considering the millions of miles these vehicles cover cumulatively each year, it’s hardly surprising that mishaps happen. Big trucks are large and unwieldy, delicately balanced despite their bulk, and so are much more prone to tipping over than passenger cars or pickups. And when they flip, their trailers often break open, spilling their contents across the road.
Images of these accidents are often dramatic — with PCs, toilet seats, paint cans, spread all over the Interstate — but none are more compelling than those involving food. There’s just something about seeing a highway turned brown with liquid chocolate, white with milk, or orange with oranges that captures our imagination, amuses us, and maybe even makes us stop to think about the enormity and complexity of the system that puts food on our plates.
Click here to see the 25 messiest highway big-rig food spills.
Source: tristanbnz / iStock
Crashed and Mashed
April 3, 2007. An open-top tractor trailer failed to negotiate a sharp curve on I-90 near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The truck’s cargo, about 30 tons of large, freshly dug Idaho potatoes, sprawled all over the highway, many of them getting mashed in the process. Road crews brought in a bulldozer to scrape up the spuds.
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Source: Serenethos / iStock
Wasted Energy (Drink)
May 8, 2008. A truck loaded with cases of Gatorade, the energy drink and sports-team favorite, overturned onto a divider strip on U.S. 27 near Weston, Florida. The colorful load spread across the divider and part of the highway. “All we need is some ice and we can cool it down,” cracked a Florida Highway Patrol officer to UPI at the time.
Source: Jason M. Hazard / iStock
Double Stuf Trouble
May 19, 2008. Transporting 14 tons of Oreo Double Stuf cookies from Chicago to Morris, Illinois, a driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel around 4 a.m. His truck crashed into the median divider and the trailer overturned, scattering cookies all over the road.
Source: cheng8 / iStock
A Sticky Situation
July 18, 2008. As its driver attempted to negotiate a turn from U.S. 59 onto State Highway 6 in Sugar Land, Texas, a tractor trailer jackknifed, and its cargo of molasses oozed out onto the asphalt. Molasses is a by-product of the sugar refining process, a big industry in Sugar Land; this particular cargo was destined to be turned into cattle feed.
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Source: Billwhittaker / Wikipedia
Wobbling Along
November 23, 2010. A semitrailer truck laden with 52 pallets of Jell-O and Jell-O Pudding Cups ran off rural Rudd Park Road near State Highway 27 in Rudd, Iowa. The accident tore the roof off the trailer and the pudding and gelatin desserts hit the street.
Source: Klaus with K / Wikimedia Commons
The Mysterious Yeast
November 21, 2011. Initial news stories reported that 20 metric tons (about 44,000 pounds) of Marmite — the popular, if oft-maligned, English food paste based on brewer’s yeast — had spilled on England’s M1 autoroute in South Yorkshire, after a tanker collided with a vacation trailer. The dense, slowly spreading substance turned out to be waste yeast, not Marmite, however. Officials nonetheless rushed to clean it up before it leaked into a nearby creek, where it could harm wildlife.
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Source: Doug Kerr / Wikimedia Commons
Crunch Time
December 23, 2011. A tractor-trailer ferrying 40,000 pounds of Edy’s ice cream through the Midwest tipped over as it tried to enter I-69 from a feeder ramp near Fort Wayne, Indiana. News reports specified that vanilla and caramel praline crunch were among the flavors that spewed out.
Source: yohey1028 / Wikimedia Commons
Greek Tragedy
May 14, 2012. About 36,000 pounds of Chobani Greek yogurt ended up along I-81 near Chenango, New York, just north of Binghamton and southwest of Chobani’s headquarters in Norwich. Local sheriff’s deputies on the scene reported that the truck was speeding on the access ramp, and slid over an embankment as it rounded a curve onto the Interstate.
Source: Aryeh Nusbacher / Wikimedia Commons
Canine-One-One
April 11, 2012. A truck carrying 19,000 pounds of dog food was barreling along I-10 in the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina when the driver of a car coming down the Vincent Avenue on-ramp lost control, causing the truck to swerve and topple, releasing its cargo onto the freeway.
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Source: andreasmetallerreni / Pixabay
Fishy Business
July 12, 2012. The driver of a truck packed with 24 tons of fresh sardines driving along Highway 11 near Kołobrzeg in northwestern Poland wasn’t speeding, and his vehicle didn’t crash or tip over. He just neglected to correctly secure the truck’s back door — thus leaving a long, wide, fragrant trail of little fish along the road.
Source: Famartin / Wikimedia Commons
Beer Bust
July 26, 2012. A tractor trailer laden with 77,000 pounds or so of Budweiser beer (about 7,500 six-packs) apparently hit some debris on I-270 near Hyattstown, Maryland, in the early morning hours, careening off a guardrail and overturning. Cans littered the highway and the median strip, and some burst open, releasing a flood of suds across the road.
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Source: Doug Kerr / Flickr
Cranberries Sauced
October 16, 2012. A semi carrying 52,000 pounds of just-harvested cranberries along I-39 near Kronenwetter, Wisconsin, between Green Bay and Eau Claire, disgorged the fruit onto the highway. The fruit spilled when the side of the vehicle split open, apparently spontaneously. Police suspected that a combination of metal fatigue and excessive cargo weight caused the truck’s side rails to give way. Because the berries were fresh out of the bog and very moist they made quite a mess.
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Source: Famartin / Wikimedia Commons
Ham Jam
December 19, 2013. Loaded with holiday hams — 40,000 pounds of them in all — a truck overturned on an on-ramp to I-85 near Atlanta. The driver apparently saw signs for the turnoff too late and took the ramp too fast, hitting a retaining wall on the curve. The cured pork scattered all over the road, mixing with leaking diesel fuel.
Source: Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau / Wikimedia Commons
Dog Day
March 26, 2014. A load of Foster Farms Corn Dogs en route to California supermarkets got loose when an 18-wheeler overturned and crashed into a guardrail on I-220, just north of the junction with I-20 near Shreveport, Louisiana. The truck was carrying an estimated 76,800 individual corn dogs in boxes. About 75,000 of them ended up on the road, where, it was reported, locals scooped many of them up to take home for dinner.
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Source: Courtesy of RTV6 The Indy Channel
Butter Down
August 1, 2014. A dairy truck carrying more than 45,000 pounds of butter, Blue Bonnet Margarine, and Reddi Wip, crashed into a barrier in a work zone on I-465 near Indianapolis, spilling the products across the highway. Authorities speculated that the driver nodded off before the accident. Packages of the products broke open, coating the highway with a slippery sheen. Crews applied a sorbent called Oil-Dri to sop up the mess.
Source: Carol_Ann_Peacock / iStock
Orange Crush
September 9, 2014. A stretch of the Pala-Temecula Road, through a narrow mountain pass near the Native-American-owned Pechanga Resort and Casino in California’s San Diego County, turned vivid orange when a truck full of, well, oranges overturned, sending the fruit rolling out. No explanation for the accident was given.
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Source: Courtesy of WWJNewsradio.com
Wing Flap
December 16, 2014. Chicken wings went flying when the driver of the big rig carrying them apparently lost control of his truck and plowed into a median wall early one morning on I-75 in southwestern Detroit. Hundreds of boxes of frozen wings sailed out of the trailer, covering a portion of the freeway.
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Source: nlentz1 / iStock
Suds and Chips
March 23, 2013. It was like a Super Bowl commercial come to life: Around 3 a.m., a Frito-Lay delivery truck, traveling along I-95 near Melbourne, Florida, just southeast of Orlando, pulled over to the side of the road with engine trouble. A Busch beer truck approaching the vehicle moved into the center lane of the highway to give it a wide berth. Unfortunately, there was a car fast approaching in that lane, so the beer truck driver swerved back to the right and hit the Frito-Lay truck, flipping it over. Mountains of Doritos and other snack chips hit the pavement as cases of Busch spilled out of the beer truck.
Source: HittProductions / iStock
Road Pizza
August 9, 2017. A truck full of frozen DiGiorno and Tombstone brand pizzas glanced off a bridge support while going through the Mabelvale Overpass on I-30 in Little Rock, Arkansas, slicing open its side. The truck kept rolling long enough to allow virtually its entire stock to spill out, covering at least a football field’s worth of highway with whole pizzas still in their boxes, as well as smears of sauce and cheese, all of it moistened with diesel fuel.
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Source: Courtesy of Arkansas DOT
Hitting the Sauce
August 21, 2017. A driver transporting a truckload of spaghetti sauce to Dallas left shattered jars all over a stretch of U.S. 278 near Camden, in southern Arkansas. Police reported that he had been paying more attention to his GPS than to the road ahead and strayed over the centerline of the highway. He overcorrected and ended up rolling his truck onto the grass median, spilling the sauce in the process.
Source: AleMoraes244 / iStock
Milk Run
November 22, 2017. A tank truck carrying 6,200 gallons of milk plowed into a row of concrete crash barriers along the edge of I-5 in Burbank, California — inconveniently enough, at the start of the traffic-heavy Thanksgiving weekend. Milk glazed the southbound side of the freeway in what was already a congested work zone.
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Source: Saint4xo / iStock
Beer Run
March 7, 2018. What is it about Busch beer and Florida highways? In 2013, a Busch truck hit a Frito-Lay truck, spilling both chips and beer on I-95 southeast of Orlando (see above). Then, this March, a semi driver from South Carolina drifted out of his lane on I-10 in Okaloosa County in the Florida Panhandle, running onto the shoulder of the road, where his rig flipped over. About 6,200 six-packs escaped. Busch promptly tweeted “Thanks to all of those who have reached out to comfort the Busch family in our time of need” — and donated $5,000 to Keep America Beautiful.
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Source: LagunaticPhoto / iStock
Fries With That
March 25, 2018. After its driver apparently fell asleep, a big rig went over an embankment on I-5 in Irvine, California, spilling the entire contents of the trailer: boxes of frozen McDonald’s French fries, many of which broke open, littering the road with everybody’s favorite fast-food potatoes.
Source: Doug Kerr / Flickr
Going Green
March 29, 2018. It was instant slaw when a truck carrying cartons of cabbage, traveling on U.S. 64 near Zebulon, North Carolina, swerved to avoid a car, hit the highway cable barrier, then toppled onto its side, strewing its contents across the road.
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Source: monticelllo / iStock
Hot Chocolate
May 9, 2018. A tank truck carrying 12 tons of liquid chocolate overturned on the A2 autoroute linking Warsaw and Poznan, Poland. The cause of the accident is unknown, but the truck ended up lying across the median strip, protruding onto both sides of the highway, and the chocolate — which quickly solidified — frosted all lanes of the road in both directions.
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