Abstract: An employee was operating a Ford 9000 dump truck. He raised the bed of the truck, and it contacted a lateral support cable for a telephone line that crossed the worksite. The bed of the truck was elevated 21 feet above the ground. The telephone line was 19 feet above the ground. The employee was slamming the tailgate (apparently by moving the truck or the bed) to remove dirt from the bed of the truck. This caused the utility pole supporting the telephone line to break off about 6 feet above the ground. A 19-kilovolt overhead power line supported at 24 feet above the ground by the same pole came down and created an electrical fault that caused the failure of a transformer and that caused the circuit breakers protecting the circuit to open. Fortunately, no one was injured.