Teen rampages through Seattle at the wheel of a garbage truck

If you were in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle early Tuesday morning, and you saw a garbage truck embarking on a “destructive tour” of the neighborhood, knocking over a bike-share kiosk and smashing into parked cars, you may have seen this 18-year-old. From Reuters:

An 18-year-old with a learner’s driving permit stole a garbage truck in Seattle and went on a “destructive tour” of downtown on Tuesday, crashing into parked cars and a bike rack before hitting another waste truck, police said.

The teen hopped into the driver’s seat of the truck in the dense Capitol Hill neighborhood after harassing the driver early on Tuesday morning, Seattle Police Department Detective Patrick Michaud said.

The “slow-speed chase” ended when the teen smashed into another garbage truck.

But what’s the top speed of a garbage truck? I consulted this thread titled “Any garbage truck experts?” on probetalk.com from 2003.

User Shomegrown writes that, because he’s an engineer, he knows “all sorts of useless information about all sorts of vehicles.

” One piece of information Shomegrown keeps close to the vest, evidently, is the top speed of a garbage truck: “between 65 and 70 mph.”