Highway Cleanup Crew Shovels Thousands of Dimes After Texas Truck Rollover

Vehicular crashes causing traffic jams are a dime a dozen, but this Texas crash resulted in millions of dimes being spread out across the highway.

Dime Disaster: Semi-Truck Overturns, Spilling Loads of Cash

On April 29th, in Alvord, Texas, a semi-truck that was transporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in dimes when it rolled over heading southbound on U.S. 81/827. The crash occurred near Farm Road 1655 in the early morning around 5:30 a.m.

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How Much Money Was Lost? Calculating the Potential Dime Haul

There wasn't an official report on exactly how much money the truck was transporting, how much fell out, or how much was recovered; however, I worked with ChatGPT to figure out how much the truck could have legally been carrying if it was loaded to capacity with only dimes in the trailer.

Legal Limits: Understanding Semi-Truck Cargo Capacity

These numbers are based off of standards set forth by the Federal Highway Administration in regard to operating large trucks on the interstate. The legal gross weight of a tractor trailer is 80,000 lbs. Most trucks with a trailer unloaded weigh around 35,000 lbs., so their max cargo weight would be about 45,000 lbs.

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$900,000 in Dimes? The Mind-Boggling Amount Spilled

A dime weighs about .005 lbs. and 45,000 lbs. of dimes would equal 9,000,000 dimes or $900,000 worth of dimes. That's 900,000 hours in a parking meter which could come in pretty handy if you're parked on the street while waiting at the DMV.

A crew worked until 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday to clear the dimes with shovels, and some of the crew members were even seen picking the dimes up by hand one at a time.