Ringing in the New Year with a crash

STRATFORD, Wis. — The year 2021 went out with a crash, bang and boom, quite literally, for Megan Steines of Stratford, when a crash during her early morning commute to her part-time job milking cows left her standing on the side of the road looking at her damaged vehicle.

“It was quite the way to ring in the New Year,” Steines said.

Steines was on her way to milk cows at Briggs Family Farm, a 55-cow dairy near Stratford, owned by Jim and Jenny Briggs, on New Year’s Eve morning. 

Since that April, Steines had been working part time for the couple, helping with morning and afternoon milkings along with a full-time job.

“It was about 5:15 in the morning, and I had just turned off of Highway 97 onto County Road P,” Steines said. “From out of the field, a deer ran up onto the road. It was kind of misty and a little rainy, and even though I was driving slowly, there was no way I was going to stop. I hit the deer, and it spun my car around several times. It was pretty scary.”

If the initial impact of hitting the deer was not enough on its own, Steines said almost immediately, her car quit running in the middle of the road, about 10 minutes from the farm.

“I couldn’t even put my flashers on,” Steines said. “It was dark, and there is usually a fair bit of traffic on that road. I got out of my car and discovered the impact had just decimated the front end of the car.”

Luckily for Steines, she had enough cell phone service to call Jim Briggs, asking him to come help her get her car off the road.

“I was standing on the side of the road, in the cold, damp dark,” she said. “The deer wasn’t dead, but I had no way to put him out of his misery.”

As she began to pray that it could not get any worse, it did. About a half mile up the road, headlights crested a knoll.

“I used the flashlight on my phone to try and signal from the side of the road, but I doubted the driver could see it,” Steines said. “As it got a little closer, I realized it was a semi and knew it was bad. Then I realized it was a tanker of milk, and I knew there was no way he was going to stop.”

With a milk truck on a collision course with her disabled vehicle, Steines took off running in the ditch, trying to put enough distance between herself and her vehicle to survive the imminent crash.

“There was nothing I could do,” Steines said. “I wasn’t sure how that impact might send my car flying.”

The milk tanker sent Steines’ car careening toward the ditch, but fortunately, she was far enough away to avoid the danger of the impact.

“I just stopped and watched as the milk truck hit my car and flung it into the ditch,” Steines said. “I was about 50 yards away from where it hit the car.”

After the impact, Steines said the tanker began to fishtail, and she feared it would flip onto its side, adding a new level of havoc to an already less-than-ideal December morning.

“I called Jim and told him he didn’t need to come and move my car off the road,” Steines said.

Meanwhile, the milk truck driver was trying to wrap his head around what had happened to him as she explained why her disabled car had been sitting in the middle of the road, in the dark, Steines said.

“The milk truck driver had called the cops to report the accident,” Steines said. “When the cop got there, he was as confused at first about what had happened as we all had been. Then, he told me he had called a tow company to come pick up my car. He said it was Killdeer Autobody out of Athens. I thought that was rather ironic, given that the situation all started with a deer.”

While she waited in the back of the cop car, Steines said she experienced another episode she would rather not repeat. She called her mom to ask for a ride back to her house, to get ready to head to her full-time job in Marshfield.

“Of course, an early morning call is unusual; people know something is wrong, and trying to explain you hit a deer and then a milk truck hit you, it gets people — including my mom — a little flustered,” Steines said.

Not surprisingly, Steines’ vehicle was deemed to be a total loss.

“I really loved that car,” she said. “I had only had it for about six months at the time of the accident. The insurance company was great to work with. I got the full value for the car. Unfortunately, that was in a time when it was hard to find good, used cars, so it was difficult to replace.”

Steines did not grow up on a dairy farm but found her enjoyment of dairy farming when she joined an FFA chapter at a school in Marshfield. Her advisers told her of a dairy farm looking for help, and she became hooked. She decided to attend Northcentral Technical College, where she joined the dairy science program.

She enjoyed milking cows for the Briggses so much that she left her full-time job March 30, 2023, to begin working full time for the Briggs family.

“As a kid, I never would have guessed I’d grow up to loving cows and dairy farming, but I did,” Steines said.