Traveling eastbound and carrying a lift, commonly referred to as a “cherry picker,” the truck struck the Glover Road overpass around 1:30 p.m.
Damage to the overpass itself appeared minimal, but the impact dislodged the load and traffic was reduced to a single lane and continued to Surrey.
Many on social media pointed out that this seems to be a recurring theme. Just last week, traffic on Highway 1 in Surrey was stopped for hours after a similar incident caused several lanes to be closed.
The Department of Transport, via Twitter, confirmed that Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement crews have been dispatched. According to this post, this is the eighth time in the past 12 months that an elevated truck has collided with a bridge in the Lower Mainland.
“In the coming weeks, we will publish a list of BC companies that have been canceled for reasons that include serious security breaches,” the tweet said.
A lorry carrying a ‘cherry picker’ crashed into an overpass on Highway 1 on Monday 18 July 2022 causing major delays.
The move is called a “good first step” by Dave Earle, president and CEO of the British Columbia Trucking Association. In an email to CTV News he says what the association would like to see is the publication of incident and investigative reports detailing the specifics of each collision.
Some of the questions Earle says he would like answered are whether permits were issued to transport large equipment and whether or not all regulations were followed – including requirements to properly secure loads.
“The effects are obvious; the causes, not so much,” he writes. “We need to know what happened to figure out the next steps.”
