GPS fails again
<p>Demetrio Rayo, owner of Rayo Trucking, sits on a cooler Wednesday while waiting for a tow service at the site where his truck slid off the road Wednesday in the Beauty Creek area.</p>
<p>An estimated 25 tons of sand spilled over the embankment near a flowing creek after the tractor trailer slid off the road.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - An Ontario, Ore., truck driver escaped uninjured after his semi-truck carrying 25 tons of sand rolled off Beauty Creek Road.
"It was my stupid GPS," said Demetrio Rayo, who owns Rayo Trucking. "My GPS said this was the way to the golf course."
Rayo was headed to Gozzer Ranch with a load of Oregon sand for the club's golf course sand traps.
"As soon as I drove a mile down this road, I wondered if this was the way to the golf course," he said. "There was no traffic - and then there was no place to turn around."
The Beauty Creek Road is actually Forest Service road 438, which eventually turns into road 453 about five miles east of Highway 97. Rayo made it a little more than six miles from the highway before taking a corner that caused his trailer to slide off the road and roll, spilling all 25 tons off the side of the road.
The road is barely wide enough for a single car, and in some places, portions of the road have washed out into Beauty Creek.
"When it went over, the frame just started twisting, and then the windshield started popping out of its frame," Rayo said. "I was hanging onto the stressing wheel, thinking 'man, this thing is going to go over.' Luckily it stopped before that happened."
Rayo said the truck was insured, but he is going to have to pass on a load he was planning to pick up in Spokane on his way back to Oregon. He is not sure how he is getting home.
"Well, that truck is totaled," he said. "I will probably fly home."
Kootenai County Sheriff's Deputy Brett Fletcher said the sand did not spill into the creek itself, but the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality was notified of the accident.
He said Rayo will not be cited, and added that drivers should not always trust their GPS units.
"GPS is great for finding the shortest route between two places," he said. "But shortest route isn't always the best route."