Thornton – Jesse Weiland was heading to work on Interstate 25 on Wednesday morning when he saw thousands of little white specks on the road ahead, coating the asphalt like sprinkles on a cupcake.
“It looked like someone dropped a box of packing peanuts,” he said. “We couldn’t figure out why all the cars were pulling over.”
It took Weiland only a second to realize what was going on. But by then, it was too late.
Weiland was one of as many as 40 drivers to have a tire punctured while speeding through a field of 1 1/2-inch plaster screws at about 8 a.m. on I-25 near 136th Avenue. Weiland lost four tires on the trailer he was towing.
The screws – about 5,000 of them – fell off a pickup driven by Jim Stimpson. Stimpson, a sales rep for Jones Heartz Lime Co., was taking the screws from his company’s Denver store to its Loveland outlet when the strap holding them broke and the screws and thousands of white plastic washers went flying.
Seeing what had happened, Stimpson pulled over. And this is where Weiland’s and every other hapless driver’s day suddenly got a lot better.
Stimpson began apologizing and handing out business cards. He offered to pay the towing for vehicles that lost more than one tire. And when he got to the nearby Discount Tire Co. store at East 120th Avenue and Grant Street, he gave the store his company credit card. Put the bills on this, he told them.
“I knew I needed to stop and get it taken care of,” Stimpson said. “I was really amazed that everybody seemed to be pretty nice about the whole thing. I thought somebody was going to want to punch my lights out, but nobody did.”
Stimpson said he hadn’t seen the bill by Wednesday afternoon, but he expected it to be several thousand dollars. He was working with his insurance company to see how much it would cover.
Police had to shut down two lanes of northbound I-25 while they cleaned up the mess. The far right lane stayed closed for two hours.
“It caused a lot of driver chaos,” said Thornton police spokesman Matt Barnes.
The screws caused equal chaos at Discount Tire, which doubled its normal daily business by noon.
“Obviously, we appreciate the business,” said store manager Heath Heimlich. “I’m just impressed that the company is actually stepping up to pay for it.”
Some of the drivers waiting for their cars to be fixed were flabbergasted by Stimpson’s generosity.
“The guy was just really sweet about it,” said Al Rose, who lost all the tires on his Camaro. “… The guy was a super-nice guy.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 303-655-7735 or jingold@denverpost.com.
