A truck full of frozen pork loin overturned twice on Sunday in Sylvania, the second time “bouncing” and smashing the side of the city’s newest patrol car.
It all started at about 9:45 a.m., when James Berrian, 47, of Bungalow Road in Augusta, was driving the truck on the access road near Peebles and pulled out onto the Highway 21 Bypass, said Sgt. Trevin Moore of the Sylvania police department
The weight shifted and the truck and shipping container fell over on their passenger sides, in a ditch. Berrian was not hurt. The truck was a 2009 International ProStar Limited belonging to Howard Sheppard Inc. of Sandersville, police said.
Heavy-duty wreckers were called and managed to get the truck and container upright.
A wrecker, driven by a man from Rincon, had pulled the container less than a mile away, at the intersection of Twin Oak Road and Highway 21, when the container fell over on its side a second time. This time, it smashed the driver’s side of the city’s new patrol car.
“No one was in it at the time,” Moore said. “The officer was directing traffic.” Two of the police car’s wheels were damaged and the whole passenger side was scraped. The car was towed back to the police station.
Workers used three heavy-duty tow trucks to load the container – still on its side – onto a flat-bed, low-boy trailer. “Due to the weight of the container, the wrecker had several problems hauling it down the road,” the Sylvania fire report said. “Fire and police units followed the wrecker service from the location of the accident” to the salvage yard on Davis Street, off of S. Main Street downtown.
Several stops were made along the way, “to reposition equipment,” the report said. “Both fire and police units closed the highway each stop until the wreckage could begin moving again.”
More than eight hours and multiple road closures later, the container reached the salvage yard, where it was turned upright. The next day, six men worked four hours to move the 52,000 pounds of frozen pork loin from the damaged container to a different, undamaged container.
Since the meat was refrigerated the entire time and the seal on the container was unbroken, it passed a state inspection and was sent on its way.