F-150 Mangled by Loaded Semi is Built Ford Tough

There might not be much of this F-150 left after it got clobbered by a semi and landed on another vehicle, but its driver survived.

If you go to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website and look up the 2010 Ford F-150 with the regular cab, you’ll see crash safety ratings for three major types of accident: Frontal Crash (five out of five stars), Side Crash (ditto), and Rollover (four out of five stars for the 4X2 model). There’s no rating for how the 2010 F-150 holds up when it gets rear-ended by a semi carrying 40,000 pounds of cargo, flies up into the air, and lands on another vehicle. But this YouTube video from Town and Country TV shows how the F-150 would look after such a catastrophic impact.

The F-150 used to be a parts truck for Town and Country Ford, a dealership in Bessemer, Alabama, until its fateful collision. Sales manager and video host Mitchell Watts explains what happened. The driver was “in the emergency lane, waiting on some other traffic and an 18-wheeler with 40,000 pounds of cargo in the trailer was not able to stop in time.” It struck the F-150’s rear end at an angle. Watts adds, “This truck went completely airborne and … landed on the side of another vehicle.”

It looks just as bad as Watts’s description sounds. The crumpled bed and rear driver-side wheel looks more like something from Picasso than a pickup manufacturer. The tailgate seems to have been punched in by a titan’s fist. Watts points out just how violent the impact with the semi was. “We’ve got … a piece of the frame actually lined up with the tailgate.” The energy of the collision also pushed the passenger-side rear wheel unnaturally close to the rear of the cab. The space between that wheel and the one in the front, where the F-150 hit the vehicle it landed on, is creased and crunched like it got bashed with a giant baseball bat.

The interior is just as disfigured. The steering wheel and roof beams vomited their airbags out. The right side of the cabin is a landscape of ruins; the sky is spider-webbed glass and the ground below is a hideous sculpture made out of plastic and chaos.

As awful as this F-150 looks, things could’ve ended much worse. It kept its driver alive. According to Watts, he “was able to get out of the car. He was able to live … to fight another day.” Watts doesn’t say if he went on to make more delivery runs, but we definitely can’t blame him if he chose not to.

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Derek Shiekhi

Derek Shiekhi's father raised him on cars. As a boy, Derek accompanied his dad as he bought classics such as post-WWII GM trucks and early Ford Mustang convertibles.

After loving cars for years and getting a bachelor's degree in Business Management, Derek decided to get an associate degree in journalism. His networking put him in contact with the editor of the Austin-American Statesman newspaper, who hired him to write freelance about automotive culture and events in Austin, Texas in 2013. One particular story led to him getting a certificate for learning the foundations of road racing.

While watching TV with his parents one fateful evening, he saw a commercial that changed his life. In it, Jeep touted the Wrangler as the Texas Auto Writers Association's "SUV of Texas." Derek knew he had to join the organization if he was going to advance as an automotive writer. He joined the Texas Auto Writers Association (TAWA) in 2014 and was fortunate to meet several nice people who connected him to the representatives of several automakers and the people who could give him access to press vehicles (the first one he ever got the keys to was a Lexus LX 570). He's now a regular at TAWA's two main events: the Texas Auto Roundup in the spring and the Texas Truck Rodeo in the fall.

Over the past several years, Derek has learned how to drive off-road in various four-wheel-drive SUVs (he even camped out for two nights in a Land Rover), and driven around various tracks in hot hatches, muscle cars, and exotics. Several of his pieces, including his article about the 2015 Ford F-150 being crowned TAWA's 2014 "Truck of Texas" and his review of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, have won awards in TAWA's annual Excellence in Craft Competition. Last year, his JK Forum profile of Wagonmaster, a business that restores Jeep Wagoneers, won prizes in TAWA’s signature writing contest and its pickup- and SUV-focused Texas Truck Invitational.

In addition to writing for a variety of Internet Brands sites, including JK Forum and Ford Truck Enthusiasts, Derek also contributes to other outlets. He started There Will Be Cars on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to get even more automotive content out to fellow enthusiasts.

He can be reached at autoeditors@internetbrands.com.

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