German truck spills 10,000 bottles of beer on road

While many people were knocking back beers on Friday night, a truck in southwestern Germany was knocking them over.

Police in the city of Mannheim said emergency crews were called out around 7:30 p.m. local time (1730 UTC) after hundreds of cases of beer spilled out of a semi-truck onto the highway near the town of Hirschberg.

A picture of the accident posted by police on Twitter shows an avalanche of beer cases tumbling out of the truck, with some of the broken bottles still pouring out beer onto the road.

Police suspect that the beer wasn't properly secured, causing it to burst out of the side of the semi-truck when it tried to exit the highway.

The truck was carrying 1,280 full cases of beer, but lost around 40% of its cargo during the accident.

The destroyed beer bottles were worth an estimated €12,000 ($13,360), while the damage to the truck was estimated at €30,000.

It took 29 volunteer firefighters over six hours to clean up the mess and they were only able to reopen the road to traffic again starting around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Police are currently investigating the driver for failing to properly secure his cargo.

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