There Goes Another $4,924,366.19

[Photo removed by request]

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Colored rivulets ran on the pavement and roadside snow was stained blue when a tractor-trailer carrying a load of inkjet-printer ink cartridges crashed during the morning rush hour on the ramp between Route 128 and Interstate 95 in Peabody, Massachusetts, yesterday. (No one was hurt. Except possibly people who hate seeing expensive printer ink wasted.)

Oh, and as Richard K., who sent me this, pointed out, sometimes photographs really do have to be in color!

Mike
(Thanks to Richard Kingston)

P.S. The title of this post is just me being funny, I have no idea what the street value of the ink might have been.

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Featured Comment by James: "Mike, I can’t resist an obvious challenge, so while publicly listening to a conference call, I’ve been doing some maths.

"Basis:

"Epson T0807 Hummingbird multipack for my Epson Stylus Photo R265. Cost of multipack is £51.04.

"6 mini cartridges per multipack, each mini cartridge contains 7.4 ml. Total volume of ink per multipack is 44.4 ml.

"Volume of multipack is 1600 cm3. Weight is not an issue, not considered further.

"Rough internal dimensions of trailer (H/W/D) 300 cms x 300 cms x 1000 cms. Internal volume of trailer is therefore 90 million cm3.

"Trailer maximum capacity is therefore 56,250 multipacks. At a cost of £51.04 the maximum value of multipacks is £2,899,125.

"Discount arbitrary 10% for dead space in trailer. More realistic value of full trailer is £2,609,212.50.

"Convert from proper currency to US$ at US$1.6045. Cost of cartridges is US$4,186,481.46.

"Now, either you are being a sly old fox and had previously worked out the headline, or you are more close to being a financial seer than you have previously admitted!"

Mike replies: I swear I thought I was exaggerating. Although I do admit that my first figure was in the $2m range and it did occur to me that that might not be enough.

Comments

[Keith Loh]

The streets ran CMYK!

[Jack Martin]

And the amazing things is this was was all from cartridges your printer said were empty :)

[John London]

My word, that's a pretty big blue cartridge that guy is looking into! lol

Glad to see no-one was hurt.

[Chuck Albertson]

That stuff costs more per ounce than fancy French parfum, so your estimate is spot on!

[Jon Levi]

Holy Mackerel!! Agita! I gots Agita! Damn, wish I there swooping up ink!

[Pascal Sauvé]

I suspect some printers will cry over the spilled ink...

[Merle]

Um, "street value"? I think once it hit the street, it no longer had much value. (grin)

[robert e]

I'm wondering why the colors are so distinctly separated, and not all run together in shades of gray or brown?

[Matt Mawson]

More expensive than human blood ...
http://boingboing.net/2009/12/30/graph-compares-price.html

[Mike Johnston]

robert e,
Probably because the inks were all packaged by color, wouldn't you guess? Cartons of yellow over here, cartons of blue of there....

Mike

[J Ho]

Hurry, get Wilhelm out there for some permanence tests!

[Jim Hayes]

Boston has a history of trucks crashing like this. While we lived there, similar accidents left the Mass Pike covered with pickles and Mem Dr. with turkeys!

[Dennis Huteson]

" Street value"....like in drug terms.

I wonder how Epson ink stacks up against Cocaine or Heroin in the 'price per' stakes?

[James]

Mike,

I can’t resist an obvious challenge, so while publicly listening to a conference call, I’ve been doing some maths.

Basis:

Epson T0807 Hummingbird multipack for my Epson Stylus Photo R265. Cost of multipack is £51.04.

6 mini cartridges per multipack, each mini cartridge contains 7.4 ml. Total volume of ink per multipack is 44.4 ml.

Volume of multipack is 1600 cm3. Weight is not an issue, not considered further.

Rough internal dimensions of trailer (H/W/D) 300 cms x 300 cms x 1000 cms. Internal volume of trailer is therefore 90 million cm3.

Trailer maximum capacity is therefore 56,250 multipacks. At a cost of £51.04 the maximum value of multipacks is £2,899,125.

Discount arbitrary 10% for dead space in trailer. More realistic value of full trailer is £2,609,212.50.

Convert from proper currency to US $ at US$ 1.6045. Cost of cartridges is US $4,186,481.46.

Now, either you are being a sly old fox and had previously worked out the headline, or you are more close to being a financial seer than you have previously admitted!

[Nigel]

Apparently after the truck carrying the red ink hit the one carrying the blue ink the driver was marooned!!

Boom boom

[Ger Lawlor]

Well, lets see if these inks are as colour fast as they say - I'd like to see a photo of the same spot in 12 months time!!

[DC Wells]

I hope this news will not be used as a pretext to declare a shortage, enabling retailers to jack prices up, as occurs from time to time with with another important fluid.

[MJFerron]

128 my old stopming grounds. That road is not a highway BTW it's a parking lot. What a mess and to think I feel guilty about proper disposal of "empty" ink cartriges. This looks like an enviromental nightmare.

[Robert Roaldi]

If it's anything like my inkjet printing experience, they'll have to crash a dozen more trucks before they get the colour right.

[Ed]

I wonder will this is the future be addorned with a Kodak Photo Window? Scenic spot on highway 128. Epson could also try to sell it as a ready made. May in a auction they could sell it of to the same people which fork over millions for a Jeff Koons. Off course it would mean the Intestate 128 has to be rerouted but I guess they will have to do that anyway.....or wait for a few hundred years for the ink to fade!

Greetings, especially to Ctein.

[Daniel Sroka]

"My god it's full of stars!"

[Cw.]

This was no trucking accident. I think it was really brilliant ephemeral art by the truck driver.

[Will Whitaker]

Pollock-esque, indeed. But I thought the title referred to the street price of the street; specifically the cost to replace the roadway which it was ultimately decided would need to be done.

[Paul W. Luscher]

Oh, the humanity! (Er, the ink-cartridge-y!)

[Mathew D. Hargreaves]

This might look really nice done by Ctein as a Dye Transfer Print. Mathew

[KeithB]

Consumerist says it was "industrial" printer cartridges, so I am sure these were more reasonably priced.

best line:
"No one was hurt, but Skittles really needs to reign in these guerrilla marketing campaigns."

http://consumerist.com/2011/03/giant-ink-crash-turns-highway-technicolor.html

[Roger Bradbury]

@ Cw: "This was no trucking accident"

For a moment there I thought you were using rather 'colourful' language! : )

[Len Salem]

Street value is one thing but insured value would be the manufacturer's replacement cost.
$50,000 maybe?

[M>B>]

It should be noted that these are "printing" inks for offset lithography not "printer" inks for ink jet printing!!!

[Cw.]

back @ Roger Bradbury:

I was attempting a twist on Jaws/Richard Dreyfuss:

" . . this was NO boating accident"

:-)

I need to hire some better comedy writers.

[MichaelS]

> count printer cartridges on highway

You carefully count every cartridge on the highway and eventually count exactly 69,105 cartridges. After you counted the last cartridge you notice that it is already very dark, it won't be long before it's pitch dark on the highway. You want to leave before the Grues come.