HICKMAN CO., Tenn. -
A veteran truck driver is lucky to be alive following a fiery crash Tuesday.
The accident shutdown Interstate 40 in Hickman County for several hours.
The video is dark, but the explosion is illuminating.
In the video, driver James Hall stood by the ball of flames that was his truck.
Hall told Nashville's News 2, "I sat there and watched my truck burn down to the ground with 19 crates of museum artifacts."
Battered, bruised, and slightly broken, Hall vividly remembers that morning.
He said, "I remember my arm hitting the steering wheel, bending it. [I] remember hitting the driver's side window, and I think that's what messed my eye up."
Hall was driving a commercial-grade box truck when he struck a tire in the middle of his lane.
"All I could do was lock down on my breaks and hold on," he said.
The collision forced his truck into the guardrail and onto a concrete bridge rail. Then, his two full tanks of fuel burst into flames.
Hall said, "I had grabbed my fire extinguisher, and it didn't last 10 seconds. There was like four truck drivers grabbing me, pulling me back, saying, 'It's going to blow up. It's going to blow up!'"
Hall's arm was broken, his lip was busted, and his eye was cut, but he knows it could have been much worse.
"If it had been a car, they'd have been killed, because I was sitting higher," Hall said.
In 22 years on the road, Hall never had a crash so dangerous. He was sorry to lose his truck and his cargo, but apologetic to his fellow truck drivers as well.
Hall said, "[I] apologize to them, because I get pretty upset when I get stuck in a traffic jam. [I] hate being held up."
Hall was carrying museum artifacts bound for Massachusetts.
It is still unclear which artifacts destroyed in the fire.
Hall will return to desk duty on Monday.
