Updated: 7:39 AM EDT May 4, 2021
Nathalie Pozo
Anchor/Reporter
A man is counting himself lucky after he nearly avoided a direct collision with a large moving truck in Massachusetts.Medford fire officials say the driver of a Penske truck was attempting to make a U-turn when his vehicle got stuck. When he hit the gas in attempt to get the truck unstuck, he lost control of the vehicle.The Penske truck struck two cars and was about to collide with Marcelo Alves, who was unloading concrete mix off the back of a pickup truck when he saw the truck coming head on.Alves was able to jump off the back of the pickup with just moments to spare before it was struck by the Penske truck."We happened to see the truck losing control and we were able to yell to Marcelo," said Jorge Gomes, who owns the company that Alves works for. "We told him 'Get off!'""It was coming at a good speed. We had fractions of a second," Gomes added.Alves, who speaks Portuguese and had Gomes translate his speech to English, said he saw the early stages of the crash and saw the truck hit the curb. But Alves did not expect that the truck was going to be coming toward him until he heard his coworkers yell at him to get off the truck.According to Alves, he had to wait for the right moment to jump because he initially did not know which way would be the most safe to jump off the pickup."I have seen it several times and I am still in shock of how fast it happened and how serious it could have been," Gomes said. "It was serious, but it could have been way more serious."The driver of the Penske truck is OK, according to Medford fire officials.Authorities say that driver struck a canopy at a gas station, damaging the fire suppression system, before the crash.