A 57-year-old man from Dearborn Heights died after becoming pinned beneath his own construction truck on Redding Road in Birmingham on Friday, when a malfunctioning lift axle he had stopped to inspect suddenly restarted and trapped him underneath. Birmingham police say they were called to the 800 block of Redding and found the man dead at the scene.
According to FOX 2 Detroit, the driver had experienced mechanical difficulties with one of the truck's lift axles and pulled off onto the side of Redding Road to check on the malfunction. He was trapped under the truck when the system turned back on, according to the same report. The Detroit News reported that Birmingham police said the department was “deeply saddened by this tragic incident” and extended sympathies to the victim's family.
Lift axles are the auxiliary wheel sets on heavy trucks that can be raised or lowered to adjust weight distribution, and when the hydraulic or pneumatic system that controls them re-engages unexpectedly, it can crush anyone working underneath. Police have not released the man's name, employer or job title, and the circumstances of why the system restarted while he was inspecting it have not been detailed publicly.
Part of a Rising Statewide Toll
The Birmingham death adds to a string of Michigan workplace fatalities tied to heavy machinery this year. In June, a 22-year-old construction worker died in Grand Rapids after being pinned under the hydraulic arm of a trailer's liftgate while unloading an excavator, according to CBS News Detroit. That same report noted that death and a separate firefighter fatality marked the state's 18th and 19th workplace deaths of 2026, according to the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
By the end of July, MIOSHA had logged 21 workplace deaths statewide for the year, the station's reporting shows. Michigan's tally for all of 2025 has been cited inconsistently — one CBS News Detroit report put the number of workplace-related deaths MIOSHA investigated that year at 45, while another from the same outlet cited 46 — and officials have not reconciled the discrepancy publicly.
Other Pinning Incidents Across the State
Heavy-equipment pinning deaths have surfaced elsewhere in Michigan in recent months. In Genesee Township, a 53-year-old laborer died after an excavator's arm and cab rotated unexpectedly and pinned him while he was helping reinstall a pin on the machine, ABC 12 reported. In that case, a coworker had started the excavator, triggering the rotation that trapped the victim.
State regulators track these incidents through a fatality database compiled from public media accounts, MIOSHA and other stakeholder reporters, according to Michigan State University's Office of Environment and Occupational Medicine. The database describes its 2026 entries as preliminary, noting that verification by the Michigan Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation program, or MIFACE, has not yet occurred and could ultimately determine a case falls outside its scope. The same database includes a separate construction-site case describing an operator found pinned beneath the hydraulic arm of a trailer's liftgate.
The state's own fatality tracking carries a similar caveat. Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity notes that descriptions in its MIOSHA fatality table reflect only initial incident reports and are not the product of completed official investigations. It remains unclear whether the Birmingham death has been added to any statewide count, and no inspection findings, citations or enforcement outcome tied to the incident have been released.
MIOSHA's mobile equipment and work-zone safety guidance emphasizes safe work practices, communication with drivers and advance planning around vehicles and equipment in active work areas, though the available guidance does not establish that any safety violation occurred in the Birmingham case.
