WEST HAVEN -- A truck driven by Jan Estrada, of the flex trucking company, from El Paso Texas, got stuck under the railroad overpass at Clark Street and Campbell Avenue in West Haven on Monday.
Estrada said he was carrying 12 pallets of copper wire to deliver to a nearby business and didn't see either of the two warning signs on the sidewalk near the bridge.
The signs said the bridge height is 12-foot-7. He told FOX 61 his trailer is 13 feet 6 inches. He said the signs were obscured by a utility pole.
The company charged with extracting the trailer from beneath the railroad overpass is Bruneau's garage of Milford. That company's owner, Robert Bruneau, said this type of assignment is a fairly regular occurrence in the area. In fact, the overpasses on River Street and Old Gate Lane in Milford are hit on a weekly basis, he said.
Al Newman, who owns a trucking company in Las Vegas, and vacations in New Haven every summer, was observing the scene Monday morning and said if the driver had used GPS that is typically built into tractor trailers, he would have known how tall the bridge was before he tried going under it.
"If he uses the GPS on his cell phone, it doesn't tell you that there's a 12-foot-7 bridge," said Newman.
Bruneau said many trucks also have infrared sensors that measure the height of the bridge and warn the drivers as they are approaching.
The extraction caused traffic to be diverted off of Campbell Avenue until mid-afternoon Monday.
