The city’s overpasses turned Jacksonville into a frustrating maze for the driver of a tractor-trailer hauling an oversized load.
Jacksonville police officers responded just after noon Monday to a report of the truck’s load striking a traffic light at Main Street and College Avenue as the truck tried to travel east through the intersection.
“He was coming through town from way over by the Ozarks on his way to Indianapolis and somehow got routed through Jacksonville,” Lt. Mark Lonergan said. “He hit one of the lights. I think before that he also struck a (power) line.”
While the contact left no visible damage, it knocked out power to the traffic light. Drivers subsequently treated the intersection as a four-way stop for around an hour while a Scott Bros. Electric crew made repairs.
Once officers determined the truck driver had everything required of an oversize load, officers guided him out of town, Lonergan said.
The result was a slow procession of a police cruiser, the tractor-trailer’s escort vehicles and the truck crawling along East College Avenue to East State Street and up to Johnson Street, carefully dodging parked cars, garbage bins out for pickup and a city street sweeper along the way.
The load — a tall, black plastic-covered cube that filled most of the length of the tractor-trailer bed and substantially overflowed its width — brushed overhanging tree limbs along the way and, with the help of a skitter pole designed for the purpose, narrowly missed other powerlines.
“The problem was he couldn’t get under any of the overpasses,” Lonergan said. “South Main wasn’t going to work” (because of the first overpass on Interstate 72). Eventually we got him out of town on Old Jacksonville Road.”
No citations were issued, Lonergan said.
“It was an accident,” he said. “I kinda felt sorry for the guy. He was following a route he was given, and everywhere he went, there were overpasses.”