Food truck erupts in flames while driving down Macon interstate

Flames devoured a food truck headed down Interstate 16 in Macon shortly after noon on Friday.

Pastor Leonard Ashford, of Spring Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Kathleen, was headed to serve lunch at GEICO with church member Mary Houser.

"We were just riding down the road, and I looked back, and it was afire," Houser said.

Ashford pulled over on the westbound shoulder of the highway, just past the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Coliseum Drive exit.

"I put my fire extinguisher on it, and I thought that was enough, but it just came back up," Ashford said.

He offloaded the propane tank, gasoline can and generator to cut down the fuel for the flames that tore through the roof of the yellow box truck with The Foodie King emblazoned in purple letters.

A purple crown on the front bore the pastor's initials, L.A.

Ashford said he travels with the fryer burners on low, so he won't have to wait so long to start cooking once he arrives.

Grease must have spilled over onto the flames and caught fire, he said.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Ashford said of his year-old business that serves, hamburgers, hotdogs, cheese fries, Philly cheesesteaks, pork chops, chicken wings, ice cream, shaved ice and "pretty much everything."

He wiped away tears while he sat on the guardrail as traffic crawled by along one westbound lane.

"I worked hard to get this. I used my own money, my own capital," he said.

He is insured but won't be able to work for a while.

He is one of only a few food trucks in Middle Georgia.

"Any other food truck you see down here, they come from Atlanta, but I service the people here in our community," Ashford said. "I just can't believe this."

Macon-Bibb County firefighters were able to knock down the flames before they reached the truck's cab, but the kitchen was destroyed.

"This is the first time I've had a stove fire on the interstate," fire investigator Lt. Ben Gleaton said as he took pictures on the side of the road.

Traffic backed up to about Spring Street until a wrecker could remove the truck.

This story was originally published June 8, 2018 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Food truck erupts in flames while driving down Macon interstate."