Now this is something you don’t see every day on a Texas road.
Drivers on U.S. Highway 287 near Alvord, Texas were shocked Tuesday morning when an 18-wheeler truck carrying 8 million freshly minted dimes flipped over.
That’s $800,000 worth of coins scattered across the highway and nearby ditch — creating one of the most unusual road cleanups in the state’s recent history.
What Happened on Highway 287?
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the accident took place just after 5:30 a.m. near Alvord High School. The truck driver reportedly veered off the road, overcorrected, and overturned, spilling his shiny load everywhere.
Both the driver and a passenger were taken to Medical City Decatur for treatment. Thankfully, their injuries were not serious.
How Do You Clean Up 8 Million Dimes?
That left cleanup teams with a very different kind of emergency:
How do you collect 8 million tiny coins scattered across grass, mud, and concrete?
The answer: vacuum trucks and street sweepers.
Footage from Texas Sky Ranger showed workers using industrial vacuums to suck up dimes from the roadside, ditches, and grassy areas along the highway. The cleanup took hours, and traffic on southbound Highway 287 was shut down during the operation.
A Costly Cleanup
While officials haven’t confirmed how many dimes were actually recovered, it’s safe to say this was one of the most expensive messes Texas has seen on a highway in a long time.
There’s no official update yet on how long the cleanup will last, or whether every dime will be found. But the next time someone jokes about being “short on change”, this is probably not what they meant!