A support column took the brunt of the impact when a pair of detached semi tires crashed into Prince Albert Alarm Systems on Sunday. (Submitted photo/Jeff Stumpf)

By Trevor Redden

Close call

Truck tires tumble across busy street and into local business

Jul 27, 2020 | 4:00 PM

A local business is repairing damage caused by an unlikely incident that sent a tandem axle vaulting across a major road in Prince Albert on Sunday afternoon.

A semi truck was heading southbound along the 2900 block of Second Avenue W. when a pair of tires, still attached to the axle, split from the truck and veered off into the oncoming lane. Fortunately, there was no traffic in the immediate vicinity as the tires rolled across the northbound lane, and then across 30^th Street W. before bouncing through the vacant parking lot and finally into the front entrance of Prince Albert Alarm Systems.

General Manager Jeff Stumpf was notified by a friend who happened to see it happen while out on his motorbike, and quickly arrived to assess the damage.

“It took out one of the support columns of the parapet above the front doors, damaged one of our doors, cracked some of the siding. You’ve got the entire axle coming off the back of a semi, coming down Second Avenue doing about 50 kilometres per hour hitting your building, that does some damage.”

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Footage from the business shows the two tires, estimated to weigh approximately 350 pounds, hurtling through a typically busy area.

“There’s a lot of walking traffic…people had walked through our parking lot about two minutes prior to that happening. It’s the luck of fate, or whatever you want to say, that nobody got hurt,” Stumpf said.

The tires that split off from a southbound semi and crashed into Prince Albert Alarm Systems are estimated to weigh approximately 350 pounds. (Submitted photo/Jeff Stumpf)

The driver of the truck, who spoke to paNOW but preferred not to reveal his name, said he didn’t even realize what happened at first.

“Basically I pulled up to the next set of lights and someone mentioned that I lost a wheel, they rolled down their window. I turned around and circled back to try to find it when someone came out to tell me it hit that building, at which point I walked over there.”

As of Monday morning, the driver had spoken to multiple mechanics in an attempt to figure out what went wrong. He said the main axle nut had no threads on it somehow, but the bolt’s threading it were still intact which suggested there hadn’t been a shear.

He has owned the truck for over three years, and put approximately 100,000 kilometres on it in that time. He confirmed that no mechanical work had been done to that area since he’s owned it, so any existing issues or defects have long been there.

The driver was on the way toward Saskatoon at the time if the incident, and acknowledged how even more dangerous it could have been if the tires split off at 100 kilometres per hour once he got to the divided highway.

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trevor.redden@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @Trevor_Redden