Truck tips digger in ditch after crash near Okiwi Bay

A truck carrying a digger on a trailer has skidded on a corner and tipped the digger into a ditch in the Marlborough Sounds.

The truck and trailer was driving south on French Pass Rd, about 6 kilometres north of Okiwi Bay, about 3.30pm on Wednesday.

A police spokeswoman said the truck driver had collected the digger from a forestry skid site and was returning it to Nelson.

The truck was driving around a sharp right-hand corner when its tyres lost traction on some ice grit.

The trailer pulled the truck across the road and tipped the 20-tonne digger into the ditch, on the wrong side of the road, the spokeswoman said.

Okiwi Bay Volunteer Rural Fire Force sent a fire truck and Havelock police were also called.

The driver, a middle-aged man, was unhurt and no ambulance was necessary.

Okiwi Bay Volunteer Rural Fire Force chief fire officer Ian Montgomery said the man did not seem too shaken by the event.

‘‘I think he was more embarrassed than anything.’’

The road was blocked in both directions for about three hours and the fire crew managed traffic while the truck was moved off the road.

The stretch of road was notoriously difficult for trucks to navigate as there were several tight corners and the road was quite narrow, Montgomery said.

‘‘It’s a particularly nasty and slippery corner deep in the bush, and we’ve had a couple of trucks lose their wheels over the edge in the last 20 or 25 years.’’