The Detroit Free Press reports that a tractor-trailer headed west out of Ontario ran into misadventure on I-94 in Indiana Monday night, just west of the Michigan state line. Driver Chuhar Singh told Indiana State Police a vehicle in front of him slammed on its brakes, forcing Singh to take evasive action. When Singh — whose truck and loaded trailer would have weighed about 75,000 pounds all up — hit his brakes and cranked his steering wheel to the left, physics took over. He lost control of the tractor as he swerved across the westbound lanes and overturned, the tractor lying on the shoulder of eastbound I-94, the trailer blocking all three westbound lanes.

Rescue crews spent more than two hours moving the tractor trailer to the shoulder and cleaning up roughly 150 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled when the tractor fell across the concrete median. Miraculously, no people were injured, and the 44,000 pounds of Nutella Singa was hauling weren’t irreparably harmed. 

The situation didn’t go so well the last time a Nutella spill made the news. In 2016, a truck in Europe suffered a trailer malfunction and scattered jars of spread and other confections over a half-mile of highway. In fact, trucks full of chocolately goodness are a magnet for mishaps lately. In May 2018 a truck in Poland overturned and spilled 24,000 pounds of chocolate on the highway. In January this year a tanker carrying 3,500 gallons of heated, liquid chocolate — also shipped out of Ontario — rolled over and let go on a highway in Flagstaff. In July a truck carrying chocolate milk ran over a ladder on I-24 in Tennessee and ruptured the tractor’s fuel tank.

Yes, a lot of stuff gets spilled on the highways. All in all, the thought of dipping a finger into wayward chocolate, Willy Wonka style, is much more pleasant to think about than scooping up spilled slime eels.

Minions appeared on Tuesday to offload the hazelnut cocoa spread, the truck’s load representing about almost 7 percent of Nutella’s annual production. 

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