November 23, 2024
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Frenchville trucking firm summoned Driver for Guerrette Logging injured while hauling overweight load

FORT KENT – A Canadian trucker injured last week in an Allagash trucking accident remained hospitalized Thursday in a Canadian hospital.

The company that owned the truck involved in the accident has been summoned.

Pierre Charest, 36, was recuperating from injuries suffered in an Aug. 30 trucking accident on Route 161 at Allagash.

Charest, of St. Jacques, New Brunswick, was transferred to the Edmundston, New Brunswick, Regional Hospital earlier this week from the Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent.

He was in stable condition Thursday, according to a hospital official.

Guerrette Logging Inc. of Frenchville, owner of the 1999 Western Star truck operated by Charest, has been summoned for aggravated gross vehicle overweight.

The legal weight limit on Maine roads is 100,000 pounds. Stephen McCausland, Maine State Police spokesman, said Thursday that the truck weighed in at 130,000 pounds.

The truck was weighed by officers of the Maine State Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit at the site of the accident on Aug. 30.

Maine State Police Trooper Tim Saucier said speed also was a factor in the accident, as was unfamiliarity with the road. Saucier said it was Charest’s first time on that section of Route 161.

Charest, a part-time driver for Guerrette, was in his second week on the job with the company, which is cutting wood on the Inn Road, about 20 miles from the town of Allagash.

The driver was hauling tree-length logs and was headed for a mill at Estcourt, Quebec, about 40 miles away.

Charest failed to negotiate a curve and rolled his truck over onto guardrails and into a ditch. His huge load of logs was dumped across the side and front yard of a mobile home. He crashed about 100 feet before entering the St. John River Bridge.

Charest had multiple injuries, the most serious of which were multiple fractures of both legs. He went through lengthy surgery on the day of the accident to repair the damage to his legs.

The driver was pinned inside the cab of the truck by a section of guardrail that came through the body of the vehicle. It took 31/2 hours to remove him from the overturned truck.

State police reconstructed the accident. The officer involved could not be reached Thursday.


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