Concrete Truck Rollover Reveals Secret Shortcut, Commuters Say

WAUKESHA — A Fox River Ready-Mix Co. delivery truck overturned at the Highway 164 intersection around 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, spilling no concrete but blocking two southbound lanes for 95 minutes and sending commuters on an impromptu tour of residential streets that at least three of them are still talking about.

No injuries were reported. The driver, who was not named by Waukesha Police, was described by a department spokesperson only as "shaken but fine" and "already asking about his route for tomorrow."

An Accidental Discovery

Doug Scharenbroch, 47, was 20 minutes into his usual 20-minute drive downtown when he hit the closure and got rerouted onto Prairie Park Avenue, then Retzer Drive. The detour added 58 minutes to his trip. He has not stopped thinking about it since.

"I was livid for the first ten minutes. Then I started paying attention to where I actually was, and I think this might be faster than 164 on a normal day. I haven't tested it yet. I'm scared to test it."

— Doug Scharenbroch, commuter

Scharenbroch said he has already told two coworkers about the Prairie Park Avenue route and plans to time it himself on Thursday, a day he described as "low-stakes enough to risk being wrong."

A Neighborhood Nobody Noticed

Patty Voss, who has lived off Retzer Drive for 12 years, said the detour pushed dozens of unfamiliar cars past her house between roughly 2:30 and 3:45 p.m., a stretch of her street she described as "usually dead enough that I know the mail truck's engine sound."

Voss said she stood on her porch for part of the delay, partly out of curiosity and partly to make sure nobody cut through her driveway to turn around, which happened twice.

"Twelve years I've lived here and never once has anyone seen this street. Today it was a parade. One guy waved at me like we were old friends. We are not old friends."

— Patty Voss, resident

The Truck Itself

The overturned truck, a 2019 mixer model carrying a partial load, came to rest on its side in the median after the driver swerved to avoid a car that had slowed to turn, according to the police spokesperson, Sgt. Mark Tatro. A tow crew from Brookfield used a rotator truck to right the vehicle, a process Tatro said took 70 of the 95 minutes.

"The truck itself wasn't the hard part," Tatro said. "The hard part was that everybody wanted to watch us do it, and some of those people were supposed to be driving somewhere else."

Fox River Ready-Mix Co. did not respond to a request for comment on the driver's status or whether he would be assigned the same route again.

The Underpass Nobody Mentions

At least one commuter, Carol Linden, said she avoided the entire mess by taking the Newhall Avenue underpass between West Avenue and Grand Avenue, the only way under the downtown rail tracks, a route she called "the thing I bring up at parties that nobody asked about." Linden was not affected by the Highway 164 closure and said she just wanted that noted.

By 3:50 p.m., both southbound lanes had reopened and traffic on Highway 164 returned to its usual pace. Scharenbroch's Thursday test of the Prairie Park Avenue route remains scheduled.