SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian man confessed to having “a bit to drink” before stashing himself in the undercarriage of a freight truck to hitch a quick ride home.
By the time he climbed out about five hours later, the 43-year-old was disoriented, dishevelled, and stranded roughly 400 kilometres (250 miles) from his intended stop.
A Queensland police officer summed up the man’s predicament in footage released to media after finding him on the side of the road late last week.
“You had a big session, you’ve lost all control, and you’ve ended up here somehow trying to work your way back?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” the stowaway, clad in a soiled blue shirt, replied.
Police said the “intoxicated” man climbed onto metal racks underneath the B-Double freight truck — which can weigh upwards of 50 tonnes — when it stopped in the idyllic seaside town of Nambucca Heads in the state of New South Wales.
The hapless hitchhiker planned to clamber out when the truck stopped at a red light about 40 minutes away in Coffs Harbour, police added.
But the plan went awry when the truck sailed through a string of green lights, finally stopping to refuel five hours north in Queensland.
“I’m really stressed out. I had a bit to drink,” the man told police.
“I jumped in the undercarriage thinking he was going to stop in Coffs Harbour, and he got a green light the whole way through and never stopped until here.”
The bemused police officer suggested it must have been a bumpy and uncomfortable ride.
“I didn’t have to worry about the air con, there was a pretty breeze through there,” the man replied.
“It was just stupidity to be honest with you.”
Queensland police said the man had been slapped with an AUD288 (USD188)fine for riding in a “part of a motor vehicle not designed for passengers or goods”.
