The smash resulted in several hours of chaos, with the road closed while investigations continued and the wreckage was cleared.

The Gibbs Logging truck and dog trailer combination was travelling west in Chifley Road and negotiating a sharp left-hand bend near the Mort Street intersection at about 11.30am when it went out of control.

It veered to the wrong side of the road before overturning, spilling the load of pine logs.

It was sheer luck that only one car was approaching at what is normally a busy time of the morning on the road.

It was a terrifying experience for the motorist.

“I saw it coming towards me and beginning to topple and thought I was dead,” he said. “I had nowhere to go except hug the safety rail.”

He said the big rig missed him by less than a metre.

A woman enjoying the sunshine on her verandah in Mort Street witnessed the accident.

“The truck was coming around the bend and it had the death wobbles.

“Then the whole lot went over,” she said.

A third witness who was travelling behind the logging truck said he saw the nearside wheels of the dog trailer start to lift as the rig entered the bend.

“I thought ‘oh s**! This is not good’ before it rolled and skidded on its side towards the intersection,” he said.

Police, paramedics and Fire and Rescue from Lithgow and Lithgow West rushed to the scene while members of the public and council workers initially took up positions at nearby intersections to divert traffic.

The driver was freed from the cabin and taken to Lithgow Hospital with what police described as “non life threatening injuries”.

Had the truck crashed through the Armco railing it would have most likely plunged down an embankment and into a nearby house.

Some of the logs rolled down the nearby laneway and stopped against the garage wall of a house in what was formerly Brown Street.