In the security video Appleton police released Monday, the Taco Bell order doesn’t come from the pickup’s cab. It comes from the flatbed trailer behind it, where a woman sits in a white four-door with her window down and a man stands on the deck. A few seconds later the trailer’s rear tire climbs a yellow bollard, the truck accelerates, and the bollard goes over.
The Appleton Police Department posted the footage to its Facebook page Monday morning, Oct. 19, and asked the public to help identify the truck under case number A26052865. AppletonToday reported that it happened Saturday at the Taco Bell in the 2800 block of West College Avenue. FOX 11 put the time at 5:15 p.m.
What the camera caught
The tow vehicle is a large white work truck. Behind it is a flatbed trailer carrying a white four-door car. AppletonToday described the man on the trailer appearing to talk into the drive-thru speaker while the woman in the car talked with her window down. WHBY reported that a person riding in the car placed the order. The two accounts differ on which of them did the ordering, but both put the customer on the trailer.
Drive-thru lanes are drawn for a single car, and a truck-and-trailer combination doesn’t follow a single path through one. On a turn, a trailer’s wheels track inside the line the tow vehicle took, and the farther the trailer axle sits from the hitch, the tighter it cuts. The driver here cleared the lane with the truck. The trailer’s rear driver-side tire found the bollard…