A highway in Alvord, Texas, was flooded with cash this week when a truck hauling $800,000 worth of dimes spilled its contents out onto U.S. Highway 287. The 18-wheeler overturned near the local high school at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning. The accident occurred when the driver veered off the road and tried to overcorrect the vehicle, which led to it rolling on its side and pouring the coins out onto the highway.
The accident is attention-grabbing as around 8 million dimes spilled out and scattered, making it an $800,000 accident. Authorities were forced to shut down the highway until around 7 p.m. that night so that crews could comb the roadway and recover as many of the loose coins as possible.
Unfortunately, the truck driver and a passenger were taken to the hospital for injuries, which were said to be non-life-threatening.
Workers were reportedly spotted using shovels to collect the dimes. Others picked up the coins by hand, and some used vacuum cleaners to suck up the discarded cash.
8 Million Dimes Totaling $800K Flood Texas Highway
“The funniest part to me was that they picked up the dimes using the vacuum trucks that are used to suck out sewage and water and stuff like that,” Mayor Caleb Caviness said after the incident, per The New York Times.
In a comical twist, the town had gotten some of the information wrong, and news spread that $8 million worth of dimes had been spilled instead of $800,000. This led some locals to joke about taking their metal detectors out in hopes of finding some missed money.
When the news hit Reddit, it seemed that everyone had an opinion or joke about the incident.
“World’s biggest treasure hunt,” one person wrote on the forum.
“Picking up one per second is $360/hr,” calculated another.
“The nearby Coinstar is going to be a hotspot for a few days,” a third comment read.
“Yeah, that cleanup must have been a nightmare. They’ll be finding leftover dimes for years,” another person quipped.
“Good, that road needed a major change,” one jokester added.
It’s currently unclear why the truck was hauling so many dimes. However, the highway is said to run through Dallas where there is a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. While the Texas town surely had something to buzz about this week, it seems that no one will be striking it rich looking for the lost dimes. Although it certainly makes for a very interesting story to tell the town’s younger generations for years to come.
