Truck loaded with beer wrecks on Highway 7

A truck carrying forty-two thousand pounds of beer was on its way to Sidney when it wrecked just a few miles north of Ekalaka last Thursday. Plains Towing and Recovery out of Belle Fourche was on scene with a semi, skid-steer, two wreckers, a flatbed trailer and a recovery trailer to cleanup the wreckage. Even though the company had multiple employees on scene, several locals also assisted.

The wreck involved only the semi, which came to rest after taking out a fence on the east side of the road. Most of the beer was unloaded from the trailer, which was on its side, by hand. An assembly line of Plains Towing employees and locals passed cases of beer out of the truck, one by one. Once out of the truck, the cases were re-stacked onto pallets. Those working used an assembly line because the side of the trailer, which had become the bottom after the wreck, was extremely slick, making walking around nearly impossible.

It took around seven hours before enough of the beer had been unloaded that workers felt confident they could upright the trailer.

The beer included several kegs and various cases and packs of bottled and canned beer. All of the beer that was re-stacked onto pallets was loaded onto another semi. The rest of the beer, too damaged to stack, was left inside the wrecked trailer.

The driver of the semi was uninjured.