On Our American Stories, we dig deep to find the tales that make our country special. Join us as we travel to Durham, North Carolina, for a truly remarkable story about a bridge that has become a YouTube superstar: the Eleven Foot Eight Bridge. This old railroad trestle, known for its challenging clearance, has seen countless big trucks, buses, and RVs meet their match, creating wild, unforgettable vehicle crashes that have gone viral around the globe. It’s a testament to the unexpected drama hidden in plain sight, proving some American stories are too good to ignore.
Witness the surprising passion of Jurgen Henn, the man behind the camera, who started filming these daily mishaps right outside his office window. What began as a simple home security camera experiment quickly transformed into a viral sensation, with his collection of Eleven Foot Eight Bridge crash videos racking up millions of views. Learn how this unique hobby turned into something more, as Jurgen even collects and sells “crash art” – parts of the wrecked vehicles – to his dedicated fans. It’s a truly American story of curiosity, creativity, and turning everyday occurrences into a one-of-a-kind, self-sustaining venture.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
00:00:34 Speaker 2: Here on this show.
00:00:36 Speaker 1: And this next one is a story about a bridge in Durham, North Carolina, that has captured the world’s attention on YouTube: the Eleven Foot Eight-Inch-High Bridge.
00:00:48 Speaker 3: The Eleven Foot Eight Bridge is a railroad trestle in Durham, North Carolina, that people keep running into with their big trucks, buses, and RVs. Sometimes entire roofs of moving vans are removed, peeled, and rolling back like a tin can. Big rigs are stuck under the thing. And despite many large warning signs, flashing lights warning drivers who dare to pass under its eleven-foot-eight clearance, people just keep running into it. One day, Jurgen Henn started recording.
00:01:29 Speaker 4: The bridge is right outside my office. I started working in that building in 2002, and every time a truck hits the bridge, we kind of noticed because it’s loud, usually. And so over the years, then, you know, every few weeks, walk out there and check on the driver and kind of survey the mayhem.
00:01:56 Speaker 3: The trestle is over one hundred years old, and at the time it was built, no standards for minimum clearance. On average, about once a month, a truck runs into the damn thing.
00:02:07 Speaker 4: In 2008, I was setting up a home security system and wired those cameras and decided that it would be kind of interesting to set up one of those cameras at the office to start filming the traffic and maybe catch one or two of these truck crashes to see what that actually looks like. I’ve never actually seen it happen in real life. As it happened just a couple of weeks after I set up the camera, I caught the first crash and decided to put it on YouTube. It became pretty popular right away, so clearly there was an interest in that kind of footage, so I certainly kept recording. There was not much overhead, really.
00:03:01 Speaker 3: The North Carolina Railroad Company owns the trestle. Lifting it would cost millions of dollars, so they installed a crash beam. It reduces the impact of trucks hitting the trestle by slicing open the vehicle like a ’46 Ford cutting through a DeLorean. They call it “the can opener.” The road can’t be lowered because of sewer lines underneath, and there are warning signs for three blocks leading up to it. There’s even a sensor that can detect a truck that won’t fit. If your rig is too tall, it’ll trigger a sequence of massive flashing lights that specifically tell the driver to exit. But still, people keep hitting it. Jurgen has hundreds of videos of people crashing into this thing and millions of views on YouTube. He even collects parts of the crash debris and sells them back to his fans.
00:03:52 Speaker 4: I credit my wife for that idea. I mean, I just clean up a little bit when we go down there, kind of pick up the pieces. I noticed that they’re kind of cool-looking, you know; sometimes they’re bent in spirals or other interesting shapes. So I started keeping the more interesting-looking pieces in my office. But over the years, well, one box after another… I eventually hauled his box home, and my wife, “Honey, let’s do something with these boxes of truck pieces. How about I try to sell them?” And I’m like, “Sure, honey, you try to sell them.” Well, she was actually onto something, and she took some nice pictures, named the pieces, and started an online store. We sell T-shirts and “crash art.” That moniker was also what I call “crash art.” Lucrative is probably not the word that comes to mind. I’m not about to quit my day job over this, for sure. I would call it a self-sustaining hobby. Make enough money off the T-shirt sales and “crash art,” and I have a Patreon page now, too, to help sort of sustain the whole thing. Every couple of years or so, get new cameras so I can capture good, high-quality footage.
00:05:26 Speaker 3: Now, for the record, the actual clearance height of the Eleven Foot Eight Bridge is eleven feet, ten point eight inches, which technically gives it 2.8 inches more than advertised.
00:05:38 Speaker 1: And thanks for that story, Jesse. And people do everything in this country. They have all kinds of hobbies. Some people bowl, some people play poker. This guy: “crash art.” And as he said it, it’s a self-sustaining hobby. And boy, that’s better than most, most of us up to pay for our hobbies.
00:05:56 Speaker 2: By the way, you can go to…
00:05:57 Speaker 1: YouTube, and there’s a video; it’s somewhere over seven million views of the ultimate montage of all the crashes that this gentleman has filmed over the years with his little homespun, rigged camera that he just decided would capture all the crashes he’d never seen.
00:06:17 Speaker 2: Now he gets to see it. Now we all get to see it.
00:06:19 Speaker 1: And by the way, if you have quirky stories like this, passions, hobbies, or know people who do, send them our way.
00:06:27 Speaker 2: I’m trying to run down a guy who has a toaster museum.
00:06:30 Speaker 1: I’d seen an article about it somewhere, and if anybody knows…
00:06:34 Speaker 2: The wisdom of the crowds is great.
00:06:35 Speaker 1: I’d seen or read this story about a guy who had collected toasters from the beginning of time and has turned his home and several others into this ultimate toaster museum.
00:06:45 Speaker 2: And that’s right: toaster, T-A-S-T-E-R.
00:06:48 Speaker 1: And he’s walking through it and talking about every single kind of toaster: the one-piece-of-toast toaster, then the two-piece-of-toast toaster.
00:06:55 Speaker 2: The ones that fold, the one that holds four. And he was just waxing poetic. I can just imagine what his wife…
00:07:02 Speaker 1: Thinks. That toaster museum, it’s tens of thousands of dollars in time. But if it keeps them off the streets, well, you know, what’s the problem? The story: the Eleven Foot Eight Inch Bridge, actually the Eleven Foot Ten Inch Bridge, here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habeeb, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send us your story, small or large, to our email O A S at OurAmericanStories dot com. That’s O A S at OurAmericanStories dot com. We’d love to hear them and put them on the air. Our audience loves them, too.
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