Takes out the power and ripped the cable out of the houses. Slowed down like they didnt notice then kept driving through the rest of the lines 👍🏽 Who needs power in the winter?

  • In my area the county workers take down lines regularly, but its only their fault some of the time. Sometimes BGE and Verizon have been told numerous times that their lines are sagging or their poles are tilting, but they do nothing about it. For them its apparently easier and cheaper to just wait until something like this happens and respond then. Sucks for the people who lose their power and services for hours or days. Really sucks for whichever county employee then has to deal with the paperwork, scrutiny, and stress over potential punishment while they determine who was at fault.

    Baltimore County?

    Harford is where I've seen it personally, but I'm sure it happens there, too!

    Heard BGE is gearing up to throw down with them because of the slack lines. It's been turning into a huge deal because Verizon/Comcast isn't maintaining minimum clearance on the back roads in the Phoenix/Harford/Jville area, and their telecom lines are fucking up the electric when a legal height truck hits them because they're sagging and pulls the poles. It's become like a once a week thing almost.

    this seems like the correct take, given that its routine for salt trucks to tip their beds up to empty the last of the salt. I'm guessing the overhead wires were sagging as a result of the recent winter storm. Combine that with the long erratic hours snow crews work and you've got a recipe for disaster.

    Its probably a little of both the driver and electric company's fault. Drivers have to empty their beds but they have to be aware of obstructions, but the wiring could've been sagging as well. If I was driving a truck overnight and this was my last load of salt I'd probably be a little over eager as well and may miss that the wires were low.

    Huh, I wonder if there's minimum clearance requirements for public roads?
    If there are, and there weren't any signs warning of a low hazard, then that might let the truck driver off the hook.

    I'm a municipal worker. Around here it's a minimum of 14ft. I've never caught a power line like that, but I've caught cable lines before. My truck only gets to 11.5ft with the bed fully up, so if I'm able to catch it, it's the cable company's failure, not mine. That truck was nowhere near 14ft high, so those power lines were way too low. Also, what do people expect him to do about it after the line is down? I would have probably put the bed down, pulled across the road and block traffic until the linemen can shut down the power and get the line back up.

    "Also, what do people expect him to do about it after the line is down?" 

    Put the bed down, pulled across the road and block traffic until the linemen can shut down the power and get the line back up. <-- This??

    You answered it yourself lol

    There is no necessarily minimum clearance, but there is a point where height needs to be marked. Trucks with their buckets raised up though might exceed that height. Depends on the state, truck, and laws. In Maryland anything lower than 14.5 feet needs to be marked and have signage.

  • He didn't stop? Holy smokes....Not good. Send this video to your insurance. City will be on the hook for EVERYTHING. It sure is a shame that the power dump blew out all your electronics that were plugged in. Such a shame....

    No. Didn’t stop. The electric company came out and was pissed when I showed him the video. Had me send it to him so he could make a complaint. If you watch toward the end the wires rip out of the houses across the street along with the soffit and trim. He needed the video too. Lucky for me, none of them were mine. 😂

    ur neighbors definitely owe u a thank u for catching this on video

    Oh, that's gonna be a whole union meeting.  Fun times for everyone -_-

    There was one guy I worked with who did this, but was really really good otherwise.  His supervisor took a picture of him stuck in the truck waiting for the electric company to confirm it was safe, and we all made it the wallpaper on our computers.

    Man too bad the city has to buy them new appliances now. Darn! 

    Yeah, Fridge, Stove, Diswasher, Freezer, TV's, Computers, Laptop...all toast...

    How did it ruin all your toast!

    I don't understand why their insurance needs to be notified if their power went out, unless their electronics are ruined somehow. 

    Damage. Ripped the cable out of the house

    They don't... They SHOULD be notified that a 3rd party contractor was responsible for any damages to their house or electronics so that their insurance company can use their lawyers to recoup any cost from the city.

  • Not defending this guy, but are those wires really low?

    Yes. NEC 2023 states:

    230.24 (B) Vertical Clearance for Overhead Service Conductors...

    (2) 3.7m (12ft) - Over residential property and driveways and those commercial areas not subject to truck traffic where voltage does not exceed 300 volts to ground

    ...

    (4) 5.5m (18ft) - Over public streets, alleys, roads, parking areas subject to truck traffic, driveways on other than residential property, and other land such as cultivated, grazing, forest, and orchard.

    So, while it can dip as low as 12ft from the road surface over the customer's driveway, it can NOT be that low over a public road, it should be 18ft MINIMUM, and this truck's bed was absolutely not at the height of 3 tall adult men standing on each other's shoulders. This was on the utility that tapped into the distribution line and left the service entrance conductors this low, because he shouldn't even have been able to hit it.

    Not to say the driver isn't an idiot for driving like this, and especially for driving off like nothing happened, but code books like the NEC exist to keep idiots from even having the chance to do shit like this.

  • This is why power lines should be underground

    Agreed. Amazed that still a thing. Not seen overheads in years.

    Easily said. Costly done.

    but what if I want to dig for treasures

    Or dont be a moron

  • Never underestimate the power of sending videos like that directly to the news…especially if the city claimed no responsibility.

    Source: a city worker.

    Oh I know. Last year during leaf removal they ripped that same power out of the neighbors house and it fell in my driveway, still live. Called the electric company and they just said “Yea thats live wires” and put up a barricade in my driveway. I tagged the news channel and 5 mins after it aired they came back and fixed everything

  • We had to start moving our trash cans to the other end of out house on trash day because the garbage truck tore our Internet off the house twice.

  • I have been nearly run off the road by the plow drivers in my city. They don't give a fuck! 

  • Why is this moron driving around with the dumb body up?

    salting the road maybe ? I'm not sure

    Looks like he's dispersing salt on the road, it should be up towards emptying the bed. Should definitely be more aware of their surroundings tho

    Why do they not have salt spreaders though?

    It does, look at the back right before it exits frame

    Oh wow idk how the hell i didn’t notice that before. Still weird though our road guys have big ass spreaders in that back of the truck with an auger attachment to feed it. Seems odd to ever have a dump truck with the dump body up driving around.

    I drive a plow truck similar to this. The spreader box is hanging off the back of the truck and the auger runs horizontal to a hole that drops into the spinner. His bed is up because the dump bed is the hopper, and the tailgate opens at the bottom to feed into the spreader box. Most bigger plow trucks like state would use have vibrators on the bed, that shakes the salt to the back to feed into the spreader. Smaller trucks like this usually don't, so the only way to get it to the back is to raise the bed. Is it possible to shift the load back without driving with the bed way up like that, but that involves putting the bed up, reversing and slamming on the brakes, not exactly safe to do on a road and still could catch lines like what happened.

    The real issue with what happened here is that the power lines were way too low to be over the road. There should have been a minimum of 14ft clearance, and that bed probably wasn't over 10ft, maybe a bit more with that cab guard on the front of the bed, but well below 14.

    The salt spreader needs the salt moved towards it. The back of those trucks don't have a conveyor system so they tilt the bed to use gravity to feed the spreader more salt.

    This rig also doubles as a plow, it needs to be bigger an heavier for that reason.

    Some places have plow/spreaders that only serve one purpose. Some use utility vehicles that get used year round for other infrastructure projects

    They do, but you need to get the salt to the back of the bed for it to fall into the spreader.

    I guess I’m just to our states trucks. They just have dump trucks with big salt spreaders in the back with an auger that forces the salt/sand mixture to the back

    Best guess is that their load of salt is almost empty and so they tilt the bed up so the last of the salt still flows into the spreader.

    He’s dumping brine out the back

  • What a donkey 😆

  • Nice detroit lions flag

  • Probably a Packers fan

    Wouldn’t doubt that. 😂

  • Someone is hopefully getting ripped several new assholes

  • Completely missed the cable. I thought he stopped dropping salt in front of this house due not liking whatever the banner is.

    Probably stopped for a selfie with the banner. 😂

  • Is this dude that drove into a bridge with the top up?

  • Damn, I need a camera like this. What kind of camera do you have? Does it continuously record like this or how did it know to record what happened?

    Doorbell. Simplisafe

  • ITT: people who don't understand how to get the final bits of salt out of dump beds and blame the driver doing their job instead of blaming the utility companies for not properly maintaining power line heights.

  • Looks like Michigan, too. In this weather... No good. Sorry, neighbor.

  • Surely... surely... there is some warning beeper or buzzer in the cab if you move the truck with the tipper bed raised? Surely?

    that part broke, and they couldn't afford to fix it - we'll just manually check ... we wouldn't forget ...