Truck crashes into overpass on Highway 1 in Langley

A truck carrying a load that made it too tall to clear an overpass crashed in Langley, causing major delays for drivers on Highway 1 Monday afternoon.

Travelling eastbound and hauling a boom lift, commonly referred to as a "cherry picker,"  the truck slammed into the Glover Road overpass around 1:30 p.m.

The damage to the overpass itself appeared minimal, but the impact dislodged the load and traffic was down to a single lane and backed up all the way to Surrey.

Many on social media pointed out that this seems to be a recurring issue. Just last week, traffic on Highway 1 in Surrey ground to a halt for hours after a similar incident caused multiple lanes to be closed.

The Ministry of Transportation, on Twitter, confirmed that the Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement crews had been dispatched. According to that post, this is the eighth time in the last 12 months that an overheight truck has collided with an overhead bridge in the Lower Mainland.

"In the coming weeks, we'll publish a list of B.C. carriers who have been cancelled for cause this includes serious safety violations," the tweet said.

A truck carrying a "cherry picker" crashed into an overpass on Highway 1 on Monday, July 18, 2022 causing major delays.

That move is being called a "good first step" by Dave Earle, president & CEO of the British Columbia Trucking Association. In an email to CTV News he says what the association would like to see is the release of incident and investigation reports that detail the specifics of each collision.

Some of the questions Earle says he would like to see answered are about whether there were permits issued for transporting oversized equipment and whether or not all regulations – including requirements to properly secure loads – were followed.

"The results are obvious; the causes, no so much," he writes. "We need to know what happened to figure out next steps."