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Truck Flips 3,700 Gallons of Road Paint

Thursday, August 16, 2012

More items for Environmental Controls

An overweight tractor-trailer with bad brakes ended up losing its paint load on a steep New York road this week, smashing totes filled with traffic paint across the street and into a ditch, police say.

Piles of sand absorb thousands of gallons of paint from a ditch by the road.

It took a day and a half for emergency response teams and a private clean-up firm to dig out contaminated soil, contain the mess, and sop up the more than 3,700 gallons of waterborne marking paint on Steuben Street in Montour Falls, NY, New York State Police said.

87K Truck; 5K Limit

Roosevelt Howard, 59, a driver for Wistar Trucking LLC, of Ashland, VA, ran into trouble when he took his 87,000-pound loaded rig onto the steep road, which has a five-ton weight limit, State Police Trooper Shields said Thursday (Aug. 16).

Making matters worse, two of the truck’s 10 brakes were not operating, meaning that the truck should have been taken out of service, said Shields.

The truck had been headed from Virginia to Waterloo, NY, Shields said. Neither Howard nor the company could be reached for comment.

WENY-TV

The driver was cited for driving an overweight rig, with bad brakes, on the roadway.

The load had been strapped down but suddenly shifted, breaking all of the straps and sending the entire load of 375-gallon totes bursting all over the road and into a roadside ditch, police said.

Clean-Up Operation

The local Sheriff’s Department said the trailer had detached from the rig cab, but Shields said the truck stayed intact. He said Howard was not injured, “except for his ego.” Howard was cited for being “way over” the road’s five-ton weight limit and for operating a truck with inadequate brakes, Shields said.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Spill Response team was summoned to review the situation; Op-Tech Environmental Services, of East Syracuse, NY, was brought in to clean up the roadway, dump sand into the ditch to absorb the spill, and excavate the paint-soaked soil and sand.

Most of the paint landed in the ditch and started to flow down the side of the street. Authorities said the loose paint was stopped within 500 feet of the accident by loads of sand dumped into the ditch.

The trucking company will most likely be held responsible for the clean-up bill, police said.

Shields said Howard had taken that street in order to avoid a steep hill, only to encounter another one.

“Sometimes,” said Shields, “you just can’t stop.”

Comment from Tom Schwerdt, (8/17/2012, 8:36 AM)

For the other numbers in the story to add up, it should be "10 totes" not "hundreds of totes."

Comment from Mary Chollet, (8/17/2012, 11:13 AM)

Thanks for your eagle eye, Tom. It was more than 10, but state police may have had their estimate wrong as well. (In fact, the original estimates varied from 1,000 to 30,000 gallons!)

Comment from Jim Malone, (8/20/2012, 9:30 AM)

Forget the conjecture, its simple math. The truck has maximum capacity of 44,000 pounds carriage. at 13 pounds per gallon average weight of paint, plus the weight of the totes, the most a truck could haul is 12 totes at 275 gallons per tote -- Max spill 3300 gallons.

Comment from Tom Schwerdt, (8/20/2012, 5:18 PM)

Thanks Mary - I was just going by 375 gallons per tote and 3,700 total gallons. That is on the large size for totes, I would agree with Jim that 275 is more common. I will disagree with Jim on the total, as the story says the truck was overweight.

Comment from Jim Malone, (8/28/2012, 11:03 AM)

Hi Tom, Sorry for not responding sooner, but I just saw your note. My calculation was based on supply specs from the NYS contract for Waterborne traffic paint. Note: The Paint was NOT a shipment enroute to or purchased by any governmental entity. My sources tell me it was a private sector sale.