Get in the experts. Just over two weeks ago a tractor-trailer hauling $800,000 in dimes rolled over in an accident. Its contents spilled over the highway. This was northwest of Dallas, Texas. It was part of a fleet of trucks that moves cargo for the government. Some cargo.
I wondered how you pick up those 8,000,000 dimes. Were they just loose? Were they in rolls in boxes? They definitely came out of the truck loose. Check out the picture of them everywhere.
So was there now a fleet of people with metal detectors picking up dimes? There were crews who used shovels, brooms, industrial vacuums, street sweepers, as well as picking them up by hand. That was 14 hours of closed highway. I wonder how long the recovery went on for?
And what was the truck doing carrying "loose dimes" - doesn't that sound like they were just dumped into the truck? Seems like that was the case. I looked up how the Canadian Mint transports coins and I got the answer for the US:
How does the Mint distribute coins? The coins fall through a counting machine before they are dumped into bulk storage bags. All the bags are weighed and then stored until they travel to Federal Reserve Banks for distribution around the country.
So we know that's a story rather than a fact. I wondered how they decided to stop picking up the lost coins? It is unlikely that they collected all the dimes as it rained earlier in the day with a minor flood in the town.
