The Cottonwood Taco Bell drive-thru menu board will be down through at least Friday, Jan. 22, after a driver ran his truck over it, damaging both as well as a car waiting in the drive-thru lane, two sources confirmed.
“It was an accident,” store manager Adam Prosser said. “The driver kept saying his accelerator got stuck.”
The driver, identified by both Prosser and co-owner Arthur Chase as an older male, was pulling into the parking space right behind the drive-thru menu board between 2:30 and 2:40 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15, when his truck hopped over the curb and subsequent landscaping before going over the back of the menu board.
“The police got the report his truck was just buried there,” said Chase, who, like Prosser, arrived on the scene shortly after the incident took place. “Fortunately, no one was hurt.”
The board’s four-foot-deep concrete base was cracked, however, and will also need to be fixed, which will take a week to 10 days and result in at least $10,000 in damages, Prosser added.
“I’m thinking that’s going to be a low estimate,” Prosser said. “It was down for two weeks eight years ago during our last remodel, and we were down to 25 percent of our sales.
“That’s a huge hit–you’re talking thousands of dollars. We do 60 to 70 percent of our business through that drive-thru every single day.”
The drive-thru lane was reopened Sunday, Jan. 17, with orders being placed through the undamaged speaker, night manager Josh Levins said.
Although Prosser was working inside the restaurant, which will remain open during repairs, during the incident, he could confirm that the truck sustained a broken fender and smashed headlights before its back wheels became buried in the dirt, stopping it just short of the drive-thru curb.
“I didn’t hear it,” Prosser said. “I was working in my office when one of my team members said, ‘You really need to see this.'”
Another car waiting by the board sustained a dented fender and scratches to its paint when the board hit it, he added.
The driver left on his own after the Cottonwood Police department took his statement for their report, Prosser said.
