Southbound I-65 near Calera, Ala., in March 2023. Representative image, not the scene of the chase. Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bridge_over_I-65_observing_southbound_near_Calera,_Alabama_March_17,_2023.jpg">Tails Wx</a> via Wikimedia Commons, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>
A driver running from police on Interstate 65 in Calera, Ala., gave up early Saturday, Oct. 17, after two 18-wheelers ahead of him pulled even with each other, matched speeds and filled both southbound lanes, according to the Calera Police Department.
The department’s account, posted to its Facebook page, starts at about 2:45 a.m. A Calera patrol unit saw a vehicle moving at high speed through the I-65 construction zone, passing other cars recklessly as it headed south. The officer turned on his lights and siren. The driver kept going, and Chilton County and Jemison units were told to get ready to help farther down the interstate.
They weren’t needed. The pursuing officer watched the suspect stand on the brakes in a cloud of tire smoke, take an exit and stop. The driver was arrested there. Police say the reason for the sudden stop was the pair of trucks, running side by side at equal speed.
Chief David Hyche thanked the two truck drivers, who he said pulled “a reverse Smokey and the Bandit move” and helped catch the suspect before the driver killed someone. He called truckers the backbone of the country’s commerce and said the two may have prevented a tragedy.
What the department hasn’t said
The suspect hasn’t been named, and no charges have been released, WVTM 13 reported. Whoever was behind the wheel is presumed innocent.
The post leaves out the vehicle, its speed, how far the pursuit ran and which exit the driver took. It doesn’t name the truck drivers or the companies they drive for. It also doesn’t say whether the two saw blue lights in their mirrors and improvised, or whether anyone (dispatch, an officer, another driver on the CB) asked them to block the road. Hyche’s statement says the truckers “took action,” which reads as deliberate. The department’s own narrative, a few lines up in the same post, only says the trucks were traveling side by side.
There’s no chase footage, either. The 15-second clip Calera PD posted is a title card reading “Big Rigs, Big Assist” set to Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down.” The chase was southbound, so the soundtrack got it half right.
Why two trucks were enough
Through Calera, I-65 carries two lanes in each direction. That’s the reason for the construction the suspect was speeding through: the Alabama Department of Transportation is widening the interstate between Alabaster and Calera to six lanes, a $143 million job ALDOT expects to open by spring 2028, 1819 News reported in December.
On a four-lane interstate, two trucks abreast close off one direction completely. Federal rules allow commercial trailers up to 102 inches wide, and Interstate lanes are typically 12 feet. A trailer centered in its lane leaves about 3.5 feet of pavement, split between its two sides. No car fits through that. Work zones tend to narrow lanes and take away shoulders, though police didn’t say whether the trucks were still inside the construction area when the driver braked.
Police use the same geometry on purpose when they spread patrol cars across the lanes and slow down to form a rolling roadblock. Here, the people supplying the roadblock were two civilians in loaded or empty trucks (the post doesn’t say which), and the plan depended on the fleeing driver choosing to brake. This one did.
The work zone charge
Speeding through the construction zone is how the chase started, and Alabama made that more expensive in 2021. Since July 1 of that year, a moving violation in a construction zone where workers are present carries a $250 fine or double the regular fine, whichever is greater, WBRC reported when the law took effect. The higher penalty hinges on workers being there. Calera PD’s post doesn’t say whether a crew was on the job at 2:45 a.m., though ALDOT warned drivers in 2025 to expect overnight lane closures from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. on this project, according to WBRC.
The movie, flipped
In the 1977 film, Burt Reynolds’ Bandit drives a black-and-gold Pontiac Trans Am as the “blocker,” pulling Sheriff Buford T. Justice and every other cop on the route away from Reed’s Snowman, who is hauling 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in a Kenworth. The truck carries the contraband and the car runs interference. In Calera, the trucks ran interference, and they did it for the police.
Calera PD hadn’t released the charging paperwork as of Oct. 21, so the driver’s name, the vehicle and whether the work zone penalty applies are all still blank.
Were the two truckers right to box in a driver fleeing police at highway speed, or should rolling roadblocks be left to officers?
Sources: Calera Police Department Facebook post, Oct. 17, 2026; WVTM 13, Oct. 17, 2026; 23 CFR 658.15; WBRC, June 24, 2021 and March 21, 2025; 1819 News, Dec. 11, 2025.
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