Drivers Face Attack of the Flying Tomatoes

It came out of nowhere--round, red and heading straight for Jennifer Gibson’s car. The impact was swift--splat!--and then it was over. Another day, another drive-by tomato victim.

Like the swallows that return dutifully to San Juan Capistrano, tomatoes have reappeared on the roads encircling the state capital. Mounded in towering pyramids on big-rig trucks, the tomatoes--millions and millions of them--are traveling from field to cannery in an annual agrarian rite that endures despite the steady advance of suburban sprawl.

Most folks here in tomato country consider fugitive fruit rolling off trucks an innocent phenomenon. Even Gibson, a transportation consultant whose Honda has been pelted more than once, admits “it’s no big deal--just a quick squish and a splotch of red.”

Some, however, see the yearly tomato migration as a rolling red menace. Spillage from overloaded trucks coats freeway onramps with a vegan road kill so slick that fire crews are sometimes called in to power-wash it away.

And earlier this month, tomato rigs were involved in separate wrecks that killed two people, injured 13 and buried Interstate 5 in tomato slush for three hours. Investigators this week concluded that one of the tomato haulers was traveling too fast and have recommended he be charged with vehicular manslaughter.

The California Highway Patrol does not log accidents by cargo type, so it’s unclear whether tomato trucks are any more dangerous than those hauling, say, sweet potatoes.

What is clear is that during harvest time, there are a lot of tomato trucks on the road. At peak season, tomato traffic statewide amounts to 40,000 trucks carrying 2 million pounds of tomatoes per week, the California Tomato Growers Assn. reports.

The Golden State produces 85% of the nation’s tomatoes, and the great Central Valley is the source of most of that bounty. In the Sacramento region, the crop is mostly processing tomatoes--those that wind up in your Sunday Bloody Mary or Grandma’s famous meatloaf.

Native to the Americas, the tomato was initially cultivated by the Incas and Aztecs as early as AD 700. Europeans first met the tomato when the conquistadors reached the New World.

Although Italians quickly fell for it, dubbing it the “love apple,” the British--and American colonists--viewed the tomato as poisonous because of its resemblance to the deadly nightshade plant. In 1812, that fear began to ebb when the Creoles in New Orleans put tomatoes in their gumbos and jambalayas.

Today, California is the nation’s leading producer of tomatoes, which are the state’s No. 6 agricultural commodity, valued at $840 million annually. But the largest tomato on record--a 7-pound behemoth--was grown in Oklahoma.

Picked by a mechanical harvester that tugs them off vines, processing tomatoes travel to canneries in tractor-trailer rigs that typically hold 50,000 pounds of fruit--or 300,000 individual tomatoes.

In the past, tomatoes met their maker in Sacramento, a city that once housed numerous canneries. Indeed, the capital is still referred to fondly as “Sacratomato” by disc jockeys and comedians, though nearly all the processing plants are gone.

Their closure has forced some local growers to travel farther--an hour’s drive south to Stockton, for example--to sell their fruit. That means more truck traffic on the freeways--and more risk.

“Each grower contracts with the cannery that will give him the best price,” says Stan Hannahs, area commander for the California Highway Patrol in Yolo County. “There’s no grand coordination to this, and the result is there are a lot of highway miles traveled by a lot of tomato trucks.”

Although Hannahs does not see anything inherently dangerous about a tomato load, drivers who haul perishable products can legally work longer hours than those who carry nonagricultural goods, raising the risk of fatigue.

Overloading--which can affect a truck’s stability and braking capability--is also a concern, as drivers try to maximize bin space by piling fruit high. The CHP employs mobile inspectors who ticket drivers for excessive loads and other violations, but some scofflaws slip through.

Aside from the potential human victims in tomato truck wrecks, spilled loads leave a spectacular mess in their wake, forcing Caltrans to deploy crews that scrape up the tomato carcasses and haul them to dumps. Though there’s no pavement damage, tomato residue can mix with rain and make roadways slippery, a particular danger on offramps and curves.

Tomato defenders say their brilliant red fruit is getting a bum rap. Accidents involving tomato trucks are not the fault of the tomato, insists grower Tom Muller, but the inevitable result of growth in what was once a sparsely populated farm belt.

“All these people on the roads, they don’t understand that a 25-ton truck of tomatoes doesn’t have the maneuverability of an Audi A6,” gripes Muller, who grows 2,300 acres of tomatoes in Woodland. “If you drive in an area heavy in agricultural commodities, you’ve got to watch out.”

Accidents occur only periodically, but tomato spillage is a day-in, day-out event during harvest season, which stretches from June 20 to Nov. 10 for processing tomatoes. Freeway onramps used frequently by tomato haulers look like something out of a Steven King movie--splattered with a pulpy, blood-red goo.

Muller says spillage is a matter of simple economics: “The more tomatoes you put in, the fewer trips the truck makes. And because they’re round, they roll off when you go around a curve.”

Spillage of tomatoes--and rutabagas, artichokes and just about every other imaginable commodity--is illegal under Section 23114 of the state vehicle code. It specifies that nothing other than “clear water or feathers from live birds” may be allowed to drop, sift, leak, blow or spill from a vehicle.

But in order to ticket violators, CHP officers must witness the flying fruit. As for suggestions that truckers cover the loads, growers say that would trap heat that could damage the fruit.

For some insight into the spillage conundrum, The Times consulted the Legislature’s reigning expert on the fruit, Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon), writer of the cult classic film “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” Peace believes there’s a darker force prompting tomatoes to jump their trucks.

“With all the DNA experimentation in tomatoes, you’ve got a live load on those trucks,” Peace said. “It’s not surprising that one or two are making a move to escape.”

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Tops in Tomatoes

California grows 85% of the nation’s tomatoes.

The state’s annual crop is worth $840 million; tomatoes are its No. 6 agricultural commodity. California harvests can produce 2 million pounds of tomatoes a week--enough to fill 40,000 trucks.

A typical truck holds 50,000 pounds of the fruit or 300,000 individual tomatoes. Drivers can be cited for spilling fruit.

American annually consume almost 50 pounds of tomatoes per capita.

Sources: California Tomato Growers Assn, California Department of Food and Agriculture.