30,000 Pounds of Bananas - The Incident

The Incident

On March 18, 1965, a 35-year-old truck driver, Eugene P. Seski, was on his way to deliver a load of bananas to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Seski, an employee of Fred Carpentier, who operated a small truck line in Scranton, was returning from the boat piers at Weehawken, New Jersey where he had picked up his load. While the exact information is somewhat lost in time, the load was clearly destined for the "wholesale block" on the western edge of Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton, the local A&P Warehouse or to Halem Hazzouri Bananas, the premier banana purveyor in the area at the time. Seski was driving a 1950s Brockway diesel truck tractor with a 35 ft (11 m) semi-trailer and was headed down Rt. 307 when he suddenly lost control. The "two-mile" descent extends from Lake Scranton down to the bottom of Moosic Street (41°23′46″N 75°38′54″W / 41.396005°N 75.648251°W / 41.396005; -75.648251Coordinates: 41°23′46″N 75°38′54″W / 41.396005°N 75.648251°W / 41.396005; -75.648251), a 500 ft (150 m) drop in elevation in little more than a mile, where the truck eventually crashed at the southwest corner of Moosic St and S. Irving Ave. For some reason, probably failure of its brake system, the truck cruised into Scranton at approximately 90 mi (140 km) an hour, sideswiping a number of cars before it crashed(probably as a direct result of Seski deliberately flipping it over to avoid killing any pedestrians or motorists, or striking an automotive service station on Moosic Street that, had it been struck, would have exploded in flames and caused greater loss of life), killing Seski himself and spilling bananas everywhere when the rig came to rest. The road was then closed for cleanup as Johnson's Towing Company helped out in the recovery. Trucks over 21,000 lb (9.5 t) are no longer allowed to travel that route.