Truck trailer blown over as storm winds rage

A pair of stranded drivers sheltered in a truck trailer blown off its wheels near Masterton yesterday as storm winds toppled trees around them.
A Regal Haulage driver, who declined to be named, said he was travelling north about 10am on Paierau Road within 2km of State Highway 2 when powerful gusts of wind forced the hydraulic unit on his empty steel bin trailer to extend, lifting the entire unit off its wheels and smashing it sideways on to the road.
The driver, who escaped injury, said the broadsided trailer weighs about 14.5 tonnes and had in turn forced the truck to jack-knife and sent it through a roadside fence.
"The wind just lifted it straight up. It probably wouldn't have if it was loaded but that's just a guess. Maybe it would have anyway."
Peter Baker Transport driver Graeme Eades said he had been travelling from Palmerston North to Masterton when he came across the truck and overturned trailer.
While speaking with the first driver he too became stranded when the wind blew a large pine tree across Paierau Road to the north of the two men, blocking the route to SH2.
Both men huddled in the overturned trailer unit as wind-driven rain lashed the scene and gale winds toppled trees in roadside paddocks surrounding them, Mr Eades said.
"The trailer was blocking the road in front of me and then a tree blocked the way I'd just come.
"My truck is high-sided and it was getting nudged sideways when the big blasts hit and there were trees getting blown over while we waited there, just getting bowled clean over."
Royal Haulage director Brett McHardie, speaking from Hamilton, said the truck was salvaged and the $120,000 trailer righted by mid-afternoon.
He said the company specialises in building and running light trailers although the units were "obviously no match for the winds down there today".