TEMPLE (March 13, 2009)—Contractors were able to pull the cab of a wrecked 18-wheeler from inside the Temple Residence Inn Friday afternoon, much sooner than they expected at the start of the day.

The workers started the process of removing the wreckage of the 18-wheeler from the hotel at 4301 South General Bruce Dr. Friday morning and predicted that because of structural concerns, it could take all weekend to pull out the truck’s cab.

The used torches Friday morning to cut up the wreckage of the rig’s trailer and just before noon a large wrecker slowly towed the trailer out of the side of the hotel.

They expected to have to repeat the process with the cab, which would have taken longer to cut up, but evidently determined that it could be removed in one piece.

An engineer told News 10 late Friday afternoon that the three-story, 103-bed hotel suffered no serious structural damage as a result of the bizarre crash.

Workers were in the process of boarding up the gaping hole in the side of the building.

Repairs will start as soon as city permits are issued.

The 18-wheeler that veered off Interstate 35 Thursday, flew over a pond and a parking lot and was 10-feet off the ground when crashed into a first-floor room, according to an initial investigation by the Temple Police Department’s Accident Team.

The driver, Gustavo Rodriguez, 50, was trapped in the cab of the truck for more than an hour.

He received injuries to the upper body, head and legs in the crash, but none was life threatening, police said.

He was taken to Scott & White Hospital in Temple.

Only one guest required hospital treatment, a woman who was staying in a room across from the wall through which the truck crashed.

She was also taken to Scott & White with leg lacerations, police said.

Investigators say the 18-wheeler, which was carrying a load of machine parts and weighed 60,000 to 90,000 pounds with its cargo, was northbound on the Interstate when the driver either fell asleep or lost consciousness because of a medical condition.

The rig left the highway, traveled down a sloped grassy median, crossed South General Bruce Drive and entered the north end of the parking lot of the Outdoor America Mall without hitting anyone or anything.

The truck then traveled up a sloped concrete embankment that’s 7 to 10 feet high and went airborne, traveling about 100 feet in the air 10 feet off the ground over a retaining pond and the parking lot before slamming into the hotel’s exterior wall.

The truck ended up about 30 feet inside the building.

The Path The Truck Took