Far from home, local truck driver makes bizarre mistake

In New York, height restrictions are not just guidelines.

That was what one Valley man discovered, painfully, on Thursday morning when he tried to pilot a McAllen-based 18-wheeler through the Lincoln Tunnel, apparently ignoring multiple warnings that his truck was 6 inches too tall to clear the ceiling of the underwater tube that connects New Jersey and Manhattan.

The driver, Gilberto Cantu of Edinburg, drove into the tunnel about 4:40 a.m. Thursday and came out the other side with the top of his 13-foot 6-inch trailer peeled off, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Cantu’s truck was based in McAllen at U.S.A. Logistics. The company, headquartered on Military Highway, has about 400 trucks and 420 drivers and drives regularly to Manhattan, said Roy Guzman, the company’s safety director.

“Being a large company like we are, accidents are part of doing business, but serious ones like these are very, very, very rare,” Guzman said Friday.

Cantu had a clean driving record and about four years with U.S.A. Logistics, he said. He had driven to New York before, Guzman said. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

All of the company’s trailers are 13 feet 6 inches, Guzman said, and every driver is aware of the height of his vehicle.

He would not confirm whether Cantu will keep his job — the driver is facing nine misdemeanor moving violations in Weehawken, N.J., according to the Port Authority — but “there are going to be consequences with this,” Guzman said.

Cantu showed no signs of intoxication when interviewed by Port Authority police, telling officers that he hadn’t known where he was going, Coleman said.

The accident, because of its early-morning time frame, did not worsen traffic through the tunnel during the morning commute, he said. Officials are still assessing the costs of damage to ceiling tiles.

U.S.A. Logistics is trying to bring Cantu, for whom The Monitor could not obtain contact information or an age Friday, back to Texas.

As safety director, Guzman — a former athletic director at PSJA North High School — is enduring some teasing from friends and colleagues over the high-profile accident, which was reported Friday in The New York Times. A Times photo shows the trailer looking like a dented tin can and trailing a curled silver ribbon that was once its roof.

“People are calling to just kind of rib me,” Guzman said.

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Sara Perkins covers Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.