GILEAD – A long-distance trucker was killed Saturday morning when his tractor-trailer, loaded with bagged cedar chips, veered off a curve on Route 2 and rolled down an embankment, state police said.

Rig owner/operator Leonard Pillatzki, 57, of Northwood, Iowa, was partially ejected in the accident and pronounced dead at the scene by a Bethel Rescue paramedic, Maine State Trooper Kyle Tilsley said Saturday afternoon.

“It’s a sad thing, it really is,” Tilsley said. “A couple of passers-by stopped, but there was nothing anybody could do … I can’t imagine what his family is going through with this happening half the country away.”

Northwood police notified Pillatzki’s family, as did Tilsley.

The accident happened at 7:45 a.m. about two miles west of Bog Road on a curve, which has been the scene of several big-rig accidents. The road there is expected to be reconstructed in a year or two by the state, Tilsley said.

Driving a load of cedar chips from Van Buren to Madison, S.D., Pillatzki was headed west in a 2000 Mack tractor-trailer.

“He got into the shoulder and the truck struck a guardrail and went up and over that, and ended up down on the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad tracks on its side,” Tilsley said.

The trooper said Pillatzki was familiar with the road and the area, having driven it several times.

“It’s undetermined right now what caused him to go onto the shoulder,” Tilsley said.

As required by law with all fatal accidents, a routine blood-alcohol check will be conducted. In this case, it will be done by the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, Tilsley said.

Assisting him were Trooper Daniel Hanson, who reconstructed the scene, and Trooper Timothy Turner of the State Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division, and Gilead and Bethel firefighters.

Route 2 traffic was diverted until 4:30 p.m. to allow Greeley’s Towing and Recovery of Auburn to remove the big rig.

Tilsley said the railroad tracks were not damaged, but 200 feet of guardrail was destroyed. There was no leakage of fluids or fuel into the nearby Androscoggin River.