Given there are literally millions of trucks on the road at any given moment, crashes are not exactly rare. However, few of these crashes involve shipping containers that end up neatly impaled on long, rigid wind turbine blades. And yet – that’s precisely what happened on China’s Hebei Expressway on Friday.
The secret to wind turbines is that the bigger you build them, the more electricity they make. Of course, to build big wind turbines, you have to find a way to transport their massive blades across the road network. This is typically achieved by placing the blades on a specially-designed trailer, often with the tip of the blade overhanging at the rear.
It’s this method of transport that caused all the trouble in a shocking incident in China last week. As reported by MSN China, a container truck was involved in a perilous crash with a turbine blade transporter, with the driver narrowly avoiding a fatal accident.
惊悚！货车撞上风力发电机近百米米大叶片！网友：这下保险公司赔大了！ pic.twitter.com/M1xexktBr0
— 希望之聲 – 中國時局 (@SoundOfHope_SOH) March 14, 2025
The precise cause of the crash is unclear. In a video posted to Twitter (above), we only see the aftermath. A semi-truck can be seen impaled upon a long wind turbine blade, which was itself being hauled by another prime mover further down the road. The turbine blade neatly pierced the shipping container on the back of the truck, leaving it sitting above the road surface, somewhat askew.
Given the state of the crash scene, it appears the driver of the semi-truck was approaching the turbine blade hauler at some speed. It’s unclear how fast the blade-hauling truck was traveling when it was hit. Regardless, the speed differential must have been high to enable the blade to so completely pierce the steel shipping container on the truck behind.
The truck apparently swerved at the last moment, so the wind turbine blade only pierced the shipping container on the trailer, while leaving the cabin intact. This thankfully allowed the driver to survive the incident, with MSN China reporting that there were no casualties.
View this post on Instagram
Another view of the scene.
As seen in the image above, taken on I-35 in Texas, it is not uncommon to transport wind turbine blades by letting them hang over the end of a long trailer or specialized hauling device. With some blades reaching up to 350 feet long on modern wind turbines, it’s often a practical necessity.
However, this creates somewhat of a risk for any vehicle that might hit the turbine from behind. While a small car or SUV could probably pass underneath, a taller truck would place the driver’s cabin right in the danger zone. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the thin tip of a turbine blade is not exactly easy to see when it’s being hauled in this fashion.
In this case, we can see from the crash video that the turbine blade was overhanging the rear of the trailer by a great degree. This would have made it somewhat more difficult for following traffic to spot the end of the blade. Still, there is a large visible red flash on at least part of the turbine blade, though it may have been on the upper surface which was less visible to those driving behind.
Ultimately, it’s one of the stranger crashes we’ve seen of late, and thankfully one without a tragic outcome. It’s a good lesson not to get distracted when driving—particularly if there are oversized vehicles with odd loads on the highway ahead of you.
Image credits: Instagram screenshots via @mychinatrip, Twitter screenshot via @SoundOfHope_SOH, Alexi Kostibas CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wiki Commons)
Top graphic images: SoundOfHope_SOH; depositphotos.com
Recently I’ve seen that turbine blades are being escorted by three cars in my neck of the woods. One front, one back, and one right behind to prevent tailgating accidents like this.
I started by making a joke that the CCP staged this so they could put a moratorium on wind turbines and focus more on coal, but then it actually sounded more plausible than funny.
And now my Temu popup ads are all going to be about wind turbines.
What are those big cylinders behind the cab of the impaled truck? Is it LNG powered?
I believe thats what they are, as i dont see any tanks on the tractors frame rails, so this could made a mess into a real damn big one.
I wonder how much the insurance is on that thing.
Typical cost for a replacement wind turbine blade is approx $300k
Sure but that’s definitely not the cost to insure one for transit. My thoughts here are knowing the insurance cost will give us a ballpark figure of how often these things get destroyed while en route to their installation site.
Gotcha, didn’t catch what you were intending there. I can say in my 19 years I’ve seen several damaged on the way to a site, but typically a scrape or small crack that can be repaired in the field. The damage on this one would be a total loss for any of the companies I’ve worked for.
Maybe the turbine manufacturer is just trolling GE Vernova.
The driver of the impaled truck was probably trying to read the “OVERSIZED LOAD ” sign and wondering why it was in English.
I too am wondering why the sign is in English.
Because the pic with the “OVERSIZED LOAD” is from a truck on I-35 in Texas and is shown as an example of how these blades are transported and is not a pic of the truck that was actually hit. In Texas, I’d say at least 40% of us can read English.
Ah, didn’t notice that on my iPhone and crappy vision.
In California you would get a ticket for not having a flag on the end of something sticking out beyond the vehicle like that
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/commercial-driver-handbook/section-3-transporting-cargo-safely/#:~:text=When%20the%20load%20on%20any,extreme%20end%20of%20the%20load.
It’s not shown, but I would wager that there is a truck following the blade carrier with yellow flashing lights, or something like that. Judging by the quantity of personal injury lawyer ads during the local newscasts, those shipping companies would get sued to oblivion if an accident like the one China happened here.
Strangely, in the UK, that truck would often have a sign saying “Convoi exceptionnel” in French.
For some reason most of Europe use the French phrase for ‘abnormal load’ and I have no idea why (usually every country has it’s own term for something, or it’s in English)
Oops
Oh, it happened in China…typical day there.
So Dong Quixote is still tilting at windmills.
Another tragic discovery of a container full of illegal migrant birds.
No sign of an escort vehicle in those pics.
A long, thin object sticking off the back of a trailer is very hard to determine how far it’s off the back.
One of the biggest reason oversize loads often are required to have escorts.
That’s what she said…
Just tie a little piece of red tape on the back, that solves everything according to half the pickup truck leaving Home Depot every day.
The other half don’t even put the red flag on there.
So, I guess green energy IS dangerous, like the Orange one always says! Kill birds, their noise causes cancer, AND they even go after hard-working truck drivers directly! Whatta world!
Hory Shet!
Chuan Transportation of course.
I keep hearing how dangerous wind turbines are for everybody from whales to birds to rural voters.
Wouldn’t it be possible to engineer (I’m not an engineer) something smaller and assemble it on site?
I wonder this every time I see an over size load.
Possible, yes. It would be heavier (and therefore lower performing), more expensive, and most likely not as strong once installed.
That IS the smaller, unassembled unit.
Yep. Plus the blades are stress-tested as part of the acceptance testing prior to shipping, and that isn’t something that can be done at the site as the machines to do it are massive and necessarily fixed in place.
These are carbon fiber, right? Isn’t it possible to lay up carbon fiber in the field?
Stockton Rush is not available to comment.
ROFL!
Probably not:
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-materials-are-used-make-wind-turbines
Thanks. I was asking on a ‘couldn’t we inject bleach?’ type of thinking out loud
You REALLY don’t want to do that either.
Possible? Yes, reliable to lay up 6 layers of biax fiberglass with a foam core on a 165+ft long blade to balance and tolerance specifications? No.
With the assumption that you know what you are talking about, it would be really cool if you just made that up.
19 years in the wind industry would lend towards me knowing what I’m talking about, but again you’d just have to take my word for it.
“You got splinters in the windmill of your mind…..”
Does the driver know that “Tilling at windmills” is a turn of phrase, not a literal challenge?
Maybe this is Coheed & Cambria’s Second Stage Turbine Blade?
(You’re welcome for the ear worm, fellow mid-aughts Emo Millenials)
So this is what China was talking about when they said they had that major breakthrough in wind power.
Was somebody testing practical effects for the next Transformer movie?
Make sure to listen 30 secs in for the second view commentary
Whew! Thankfully, no dead whales.
The Chinese on the side of the container is pronounced “Don Khi Ho Te”*
*Not really, I can’t actually speak Chinese.
shank shank
I’ve dealt with wind turbine transporting for nearly 2 decades now, in the states all are required to have leading and trailing cars. And this is why you shouldn’t get in between a load and their escort vehicles.
I get the feeling that the Chinese regulatory environment might be a bit more relaxed in this particular instance.
Just wait.
Spent a year of my life working closely with Chinese companies, relaxed is putting it mildly.
Not today Satan. Not today.