A 34-year-old Flint truck driver, Tyler James Lewis Zellar, died on Tuesday, October 27, when the semi-tractor he was driving overturned in the median of Interstate 69 in Attica Township, Lapeer County, scattering the large boulders it was hauling across both sides of the freeway, the Lapeer County Sheriff's Office said. The crash closed I-69 in both directions for about five hours.

Source: The County Press, Lapeer

Sheriff's deputies were dispatched at about 9:46 a.m. on October 27 to eastbound I-69, east of Lake Pleasant Road, after reports that a semi-tractor had entered the median and overturned. The County Press, reporting from the scene that morning, said the dispatch reported the driver trapped in the cab of the truck, and that Attica Township and Imlay City fire departments responded. Zellar was pronounced dead at the scene.

A 1998 tractor, a load of boulders, and a crossing of both lanes

Investigators identified the truck as a 1998 Ford Sterling LT9500 semi-tractor hauling a trailer loaded with large boulders. The load had been collected from a job site in Lapeer and was being transported to Columbus, Michigan. According to the sheriff's office, the truck was travelling in the right lane of eastbound I-69 before it moved across the left lane and overturned in the grassy median. The impact scattered boulders across the median and across both the eastbound and westbound lanes, and the truck also leaked fuel, adding a clean-up hazard at the scene.

Remarkably, given rocks thrown across a live interstate, authorities reported no injuries and no vehicle damage involving other motorists from the boulders. Zellar was the only person killed or hurt in the crash.

Both directions closed, traffic pushed onto Lake Pleasant Road

The closure covered eastbound and westbound I-69 at Lake Pleasant Road in Attica Township, with traffic diverted onto the Lake Pleasant Road ramps while crews worked. Lapeer County Road Commission crews and equipment cleaned up the spilled rocks and debris once the truck was pulled upright and removed from the median, The County Press reported, and the highway reopened later that afternoon, at about 3 p.m.

I-69: the Canada-to-Midwest freight corridor

Interstate 69 is one of the main freight arteries of the Great Lakes region. From the Blue Water Bridge at Port Huron, on the Canadian border, it runs southwest through Flint and Lansing and on toward Indianapolis, carrying cross-border truck traffic between Ontario and the American Midwest. The Attica Township stretch, east of Lake Pleasant Road, is a rural two-lane-each-way section through Lapeer County farmland. For Punjabi and other immigrant truckers who regularly run the Port Huron crossing and the Flint–Lansing corridor, it is a routine but unforgiving piece of road: high speeds, a grassy median, and — as this crash showed — heavy, unyielding loads that turn a single loss of control into a hazard for traffic in both directions.

The truck in this crash was 28 years old, a 1998 model, and was hauling boulders — among the least forgiving cargoes when a trailer rolls, because the load shifts and spills instead of staying contained. Investigators have not said whether the truck's condition, the load, driver fatigue, a medical event or any other factor played a role, and readers should treat any early speculation about why the truck left its lane as unproven until the sheriff's office reports.

What happens next

The Lapeer County Sheriff's Office is continuing to investigate the circumstances of the rollover, including why the truck crossed lanes. No further official findings — on the truck's mechanical state, the driver's condition before the crash, or a final cause — had been released in the reports available on Thursday, October 29, when MLive, WNEM and WJRT ABC12 published the sheriff's identification of Zellar. I-69 at Lake Pleasant Road is fully open, and there are no remaining restrictions from the crash.