I-80 Truck Wreck

Pennslyvania Truck Accident

Some livestock killed, two truckers injured in I-80 crash

Workers spent more than an hour transferring 180 pigs, some of them dead or injured, from one tractor trailer to two others at the scene of an accident this morning on Interstate 80 East near Scotrun.

Two drivers were taken to the hospital from the 8:30 a.m. accident involving a total of five trucks just west of the Scotrun ramp onto I-80 East. Traffic was closed to one lane for almost nine hours.

Mark Best of Lyons, N.Y., was transporting 180 six-month-old potbellied pigs in a 48-foot-long trailer for Ag Management Services Inc. in Waterloo, N.Y. The pigs were being taken from Waterloo to a slaughterhouse in Hatfield.

“Something exploded on my truck,” Best said after talking to state troopers from the Swiftwater barracks on scene. “We don’t know what it was.”

The problem caused Best’s vehicle to collide with a tractor owned by the JED Trucking Warehouse in Somerville, N.J.

Both vehicles then hit another tractor trailer owned by Pella Windows & Doors in Dunmore, which then rear-ended a third tractor trailer owned by JSTR Transport in Terryville, Conn. The JSTR Transport truck was knocked into the rear of a Western Express Inc. truck.

Best’s vehicle flipped onto the driver’s side, coming to rest partially off the road, while the JED Trucking tractor went into the woods, coming to rest with its front facing the road.

The JED tractor’s driver had a facial injury while the Pella truck driver suffered a broken arm, said JSTR driver Wayne LeBlanc of Connecticut, who got out and went over to check on them after being rear-ended. The injured drivers’ identities and conditions have not been released.

Best, who crawled out of his overturned cab, was uninjured, as were LeBlanc, who had some shoulder pain, and the Western Express driver.

“I’ve never had an accident in my 31 years of driving,” Best said, looking at his overturned trailer with the pigs trapped inside.

State police closed one lane, causing traffic to back up, as Bolus Towing from Scranton removed the damaged vehicles from the scene. Passing motorists stared at the wreck, hearing the loud, frightened, pain-filled squeals of the surviving pigs inside the trailer.

The trailer that housed the pigs has slitted holes in the sides. With the trailer on its side, some of the agitated pigs couldn’t avoid stepping through those holes. One pig’s foot was bloody when it stepped through one of the holes.

Best and others tore open a hole in the overturned trailer’s roof so they could see the pigs while waiting for other trucks to come and unload them. At one point, the pigs settled down, but again grew agitated shortly before two other tractor trailers from Ag Management arrived to take them.

The first truck arrived shortly after 12:30 p.m., driven by fellow Ag Management employee Ray Jones. Jones backed his trailer up so that his rear doors faced the overturned trailer’s rear doors.

Best, Jones, Bolus Towing employees and a cleanup crew from Minuteman Spill Response Inc. in Mifflinville then built a makeshift corral, using 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets of plywood. They attached the corral to the rear doors of both trailers and herded the surviving pigs from one trailer onto the other.

One injured pig fell in the doorway of the overturned trailer, unable to move, as others stepped on it to get through the corral into the other trailer.

The process was repeated when the second truck arrived to take the remaining pigs.

Ag Management’s office declined to comment on what will be done with the injured pigs or how the dead ones will be disposed of. State police are investigating the accident and have not commented on the exact cause or whether any charges will be filed.

First reported by Pocono Record

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