BOSTON (WHDH) - An exit off of the Mass Pike is back open after a rental truck full of mattress toppers caught fire, closing the Exit 131 ramp in the process.
The two men driving the U-Haul truck said they were on the Pike when they noticed something was off.
“We noticed a light had gone on in our U-Haul,” said Will Stern, one of the drivers. “We checked the engine temperature gauge and it was running pretty hot.”
When they pulled over the truck began smoking and they quickly jumped out.
“We were able to grab some of our stuff, we grabbed our backpacks,” said Stern. “We couldn’t see the truck at all because it had smoked up so much.”
The truck was on fire moments later. “We heard this loud bang and I looked back and the truck was on fire,” Stern said.
The two men run a business supplying mattress toppers to students living in college dorms. They were headed to Harvard to make a delivery with hundreds of toppers when the fire broke out.
“When we hopped out initially, I think both of us were like should we go back and try to get the mattresses?” said Stern.
The men said they did call U-Haul to get roadside assistance just before the fire started and plan to make another mattress delivery Tuesday with a new truck.
MassDOT announced the ramp’s closure just after 3:45 p.m. Monday as crews knocked down the flames at the Allston-Brighton/Cambridge exit.
Boston Fire crews were able to put out the flames thanks in part to a hose they ran some 50 feet off of the ramp and to a hydrant down below, according to their tweet.
First responders soon switched into clean-up mode as they worked to clear a large amount of smoldering debris, some of which blew off the ramp and onto a shed structure beneath the exit.
The ramp later reopened after 7 p.m.
Details on what may have caused the fire have not yet been released yet.
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