On Monday, a convoy of three 20m oversized trucks travelled through Dunedin from Christchurch on their way to South Port in Bluff to deliver parts of a 60m wood-chip conveyer belt.
A tight corner in Pine Hill and instructions not to cross the centre line caused one of the three trucks to hit a footpath guard rail.
A driver who was part of the convoy told the Otago Daily Times the damage was caused by a mixture of poor piloting and bad paperwork.
"I found it all very stressful.
"It should never be that stressful," he said.
The damage caused an outpouring of criticism on social media towards the driver of the last truck in the convoy.
"The public are such funny people ... they’re posting about how the truck driver can’t be very good at his job, but I doubt many of them could drive a 64.5-foot truck and trailer from Christchurch to Bluff and only hit a few cones - unfortunately this time it hit that hill," the driver said.
"Some of our members of the public can’t even drive their little town cars."
He said the convoy had an incident with the last truck and trailer.
The vehicle was 4.6m-wide and when coming down the hill into Dunedin, the last corner was very tight.
The three truck drivers were told by a pilot to "not cross the centre line".
"The pilot should have told us to cross the centre line," he said.
He said there were six pilots and they should have been able to stop the incident from happening.
"They should have let the driver go where he wanted, and needed to go ... traffic should have been stopped but the pilots didn’t want to stop the traffic."
The truck driver said the permit the convoy had received did not allow for that section of road to be closed, which is why the orders were given to not cross the centre line.
"We travelled 600km, and when you plan you have to cover every bridge, since they all have to be closed, you need to plan every road, every overpass has to be measured.
"The person who made the plan for this trip was not the same person piloting — lo and behold, afterwards we were told we should have gone over the centre line but the pilot said he told the other to guide us to go hard left."
The incident was reported to NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi by the transporting company.
The agency’s coastal Otago acting systems manager Chris Harris said the highway team were aware of reports of damage and were gathering information.
"We are intending to make contact with the transport company for cost reimbursement," Mr Harris said.
"Any witnesses would be helpful, please phone 0800 4 HIGHWAYS [0800 444 449]."
