Cargo Spills on Freeways Often Spell a Free-for-All

The truckloads of oranges, avocados, mayonnaise jars and heads of lettuce that have spilled onto the Southland’s freeways over the years seem to blend in Rhonda Kramer’s mind.

But some memories linger. The overturned cache of Brooke Shields dolls that once snarled Route 91 stands out as the primo Los Angeles freeway tie-up.

“It happened sometime around 1980 and 1981, and it was hysterical,” said Kramer, co-owner of LA Network, a radio traffic reporting service. “People picked them up pretty quick. I guess (Shields) was really hot that year.”

In the nine years that she has flown her traffic plane over the 722 packed miles of the region’s freeway system, Kramer has watched motorists pick up a lot of bizarre “spill loads”--such as the contents of the overturned Brink’s armored car that split open a few years back.

“All those coins were lying on the Hollywood southbound at Highland,” she recalled with a grin. “The Highway Patrol told us, ‘Don’t say what it is (over the radio). We’ve got enough problems already.’ “I bet they’re still finding nickels in the bushes there,” she mused.

Freeway jams caused by overturned trucks are a way of life around Los Angeles, veteran traffic watchers say. But even jaded motorists appreciate a good show, and they often get it when unusual cargo spews onto any of the region’s 22 freeways.

Ask Caltrans spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli about memorable spills on the roads and she rattles off an impressive list: “We’ve had a wild boar’s head, a 5-foot-tall papier-mache rhinoceros, a U.S. Navy depth charge and other explosives, sides of beef, molten lard and millions of IBM punch cards that took absolutely hours to pull off the adjacent shrubbery.”

KNX-AM reporter Bill Keene’s two personal favorites occurred along the Ventura Freeway: a spilled truckload of mannequins (“We got calls reporting dead bodies, people really were panicking”) and an overturned trailer of portable toilets.

Local commuters can be a pretty insouciant bunch, Keene said, but they always perk up at the sight of quirky cargo spills. “They’re used to delays on the freeways . . . (and) there’s a certain amount of boredom and ennui. But whenever something unusual happens, my phone just rings off the hook.

“They actually are jaded to accidents and won’t bother to report a crash involving injuries. But they’ll call to say there’s a dog running on the highway divider.”

When the spill load is worth scavenging, motorists have been known to leave their cars and start loading up. Besides the overturned Brink’s armored car and the Brooke Shields dolls, Kramer recalled spills involving baseball caps and cases of soft drinks. In both instances, “everybody was getting out and picking them up,” she said, and the human traffic further strangled the freeway.

For some spill loads, such as livestock, the Highway Patrol must enlist the aid of specialists. “Six years ago, a cattle truck overturned and we had loose cattle all over the Golden State Freeway,” Kramer said. “They had to call out cowboys on horseback to rope them up.”

In the midst of his reminiscences about weird freeway spills, Keene was called away for a minute with a report of an early morning collision between a tractor-trailer and a truck. The truck’s cargo, a shipment of more than 100 beehives, spilled out into several traffic lanes. The bees were rounded up before sunrise by two beekeepers using smoke pots.

With the quirks and the jams of the Los Angeles-area freeway system, Keene said, he still thinks that “it’s just absolutely outstanding--so many cars get to so many places. Sometimes they have to wait, but they all get where they’re going, and I think that’s amazing.”