Whether you wanted to make phone calls for life, do your laundry or hang out at the video arcade, Friday could have been your day had you been travelling down Kamloops way.
Thursday night at around 7:40 p. m., a truck carrying a load of brand new pennies and 2010 quarters crashed while travelling on the Trans Canada highway, just outside of Kamloops.
After spending Thursday night guarding the cargo from those who might be wishing to pick up a little ill gotten pocket change, the RCMP and local towing agencies finally secured the shipment and righted the disabled vehicle.
While the Mint did not disclose the dollar amount, they said that the shipment was sizeable in nature and that they expected that all pennies and quarters would be accounted for.
LOOSE CHANGE: Truck takes tumble, dumping load of Olympic quarters
by Cam Fortems and Robert Koopmans
Kamloops Daily News
Friday, February 8, 2008
Anyone hoping to head out with a metal detector today looking for spilled treasure at the site of an accident involving a Canadian mint truck can forget it — there’s no ‘gold’ in them hills.
Crews did the job Friday, combing through snow and slush to retrieve tens of thousands of dollars of hard cash — pennies and Olympic-design quarters headed for the Coast.
The coins, destined to hit the market Feb. 20, landed instead down an embankment late Thursday after a semi-trailer travelling west from Kamloops rolled off the Trans-Canada Highway.
Bruce Bischoff, a supervisor with Don’s Towing and part of the recovery operation, had a message to potential scavengers hoping to cash in from the crash.
“There will be a metal detector out here tonight,” Bischoff said Friday. “It will be combed through. Guys with metal detectors might as well stay away because there won’t be anything left.”
Friday afternoon, a dozen workers contracted by an insurance company rooted through the snow and dirt unearthing coins from the Canadian Mint.
Const. Dave Kelly said the accident occurred around 7:30 p.m. Thursday, about two kilometres west of the Kamloops Lake lookout.
The westbound transport truck may have been driving too fast for road conditions and slid on a curve. The rig tipped, went through the ditch and down a five-metre embankment, spilling its load.
Kelly said the driver and a passenger were not injured, although both were taken to hospital as a precaution.
Motor Vehicle Act charges related to driving too fast for road conditions remain possible, he said.
The rig’s driver, Barry Fetch, blamed ice on the highway. The truck had detoured to the route because the Coquihalla Highway was closed.
“The tractor was jackknifing and then straightened out. I thought everything was all right and then the whole trailer went over on its side.”
Fetch’s co-driver, Peter Russell, was in the sleeper when the crash occurred. He was taken out on a stretcher but was back on the scene later in the morning. He suffered a concussion and received stitches on his leg and above his eye.
Fetch was also treated for a facial injury.
The precious cargo burst from the roof of the Reimer Express Lines semi-trailer unit, littering the ground.
“I feel like a leprechaun,” said one of the men loading loose and rolled change into blue tote boxes on skids.
A skid-steer loader on tracks wheeled the coins up a trail where they were loaded on another semi-trailer.
The quarters spilled out of Canadian Mint brick-shaped cardboard boxes of quarters stamped “Snowboard — Do not distribute prior to Feb. 20.”
In addition to the $500 bricks of quarters were boxes of pennies.
While boxes were broken open, most of the rolls of coins remained encased in transparent plastic cases.
Christine Aquino, communications director for the Royal Canadian Mint, said the truck was loaded with pennies and quarters bound for the Lower Mainland.
The quarters were part of a new series of 2010 Winter Olympic coins, she said. The 25-cent piece features a snowboarder, and was due to be publicly released Feb. 20.
The accident will not cause trade or commerce problems in the Lower Mainland, she said, as the coins were still weeks from circulation. Even if the money had been expected sooner, the mint — responsible for distribution of new cash as well as its creation — would have acted quickly to get new coins in the flow.
Aquino said a private firm has been contracted to recover the spilled coins. She would not disclose how much the load of cash was worth, citing security reasons.
Ted Mader, one of the workers loading rolls and loose change into blue boxes said he’d handled this much money “only in my dreams.”
Mader and others complained of numb fingers as they took off gloves to pluck the coins scattered through a melange of snow, ice and dirt.
Thursday night at around 7:40 p. m., a truck carrying a load of brand new pennies and 2010 quarters crashed while travelling on the Trans Canada highway, just outside of Kamloops.
After spending Thursday night guarding the cargo from those who might be wishing to pick up a little ill gotten pocket change, the RCMP and local towing agencies finally secured the shipment and righted the disabled vehicle.
While the Mint did not disclose the dollar amount, they said that the shipment was sizeable in nature and that they expected that all pennies and quarters would be accounted for.
LOOSE CHANGE: Truck takes tumble, dumping load of Olympic quarters
by Cam Fortems and Robert Koopmans
Kamloops Daily News
Friday, February 8, 2008
Anyone hoping to head out with a metal detector today looking for spilled treasure at the site of an accident involving a Canadian mint truck can forget it — there’s no ‘gold’ in them hills.
Crews did the job Friday, combing through snow and slush to retrieve tens of thousands of dollars of hard cash — pennies and Olympic-design quarters headed for the Coast.
The coins, destined to hit the market Feb. 20, landed instead down an embankment late Thursday after a semi-trailer travelling west from Kamloops rolled off the Trans-Canada Highway.
Bruce Bischoff, a supervisor with Don’s Towing and part of the recovery operation, had a message to potential scavengers hoping to cash in from the crash.
“There will be a metal detector out here tonight,” Bischoff said Friday. “It will be combed through. Guys with metal detectors might as well stay away because there won’t be anything left.”
Friday afternoon, a dozen workers contracted by an insurance company rooted through the snow and dirt unearthing coins from the Canadian Mint.
Const. Dave Kelly said the accident occurred around 7:30 p.m. Thursday, about two kilometres west of the Kamloops Lake lookout.
The westbound transport truck may have been driving too fast for road conditions and slid on a curve. The rig tipped, went through the ditch and down a five-metre embankment, spilling its load.
Kelly said the driver and a passenger were not injured, although both were taken to hospital as a precaution.
Motor Vehicle Act charges related to driving too fast for road conditions remain possible, he said.
The rig’s driver, Barry Fetch, blamed ice on the highway. The truck had detoured to the route because the Coquihalla Highway was closed.
“The tractor was jackknifing and then straightened out. I thought everything was all right and then the whole trailer went over on its side.”
Fetch’s co-driver, Peter Russell, was in the sleeper when the crash occurred. He was taken out on a stretcher but was back on the scene later in the morning. He suffered a concussion and received stitches on his leg and above his eye.
Fetch was also treated for a facial injury.
The precious cargo burst from the roof of the Reimer Express Lines semi-trailer unit, littering the ground.
“I feel like a leprechaun,” said one of the men loading loose and rolled change into blue tote boxes on skids.
A skid-steer loader on tracks wheeled the coins up a trail where they were loaded on another semi-trailer.
The quarters spilled out of Canadian Mint brick-shaped cardboard boxes of quarters stamped “Snowboard — Do not distribute prior to Feb. 20.”
In addition to the $500 bricks of quarters were boxes of pennies.
While boxes were broken open, most of the rolls of coins remained encased in transparent plastic cases.
Christine Aquino, communications director for the Royal Canadian Mint, said the truck was loaded with pennies and quarters bound for the Lower Mainland.
The quarters were part of a new series of 2010 Winter Olympic coins, she said. The 25-cent piece features a snowboarder, and was due to be publicly released Feb. 20.
The accident will not cause trade or commerce problems in the Lower Mainland, she said, as the coins were still weeks from circulation. Even if the money had been expected sooner, the mint — responsible for distribution of new cash as well as its creation — would have acted quickly to get new coins in the flow.
Aquino said a private firm has been contracted to recover the spilled coins. She would not disclose how much the load of cash was worth, citing security reasons.
Ted Mader, one of the workers loading rolls and loose change into blue boxes said he’d handled this much money “only in my dreams.”
Mader and others complained of numb fingers as they took off gloves to pluck the coins scattered through a melange of snow, ice and dirt.
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