The boss of the firm whose 26-tonne lorry crushed a small car has offered to buy the driver a new one.

Robert Lee, 76, escaped with nothing more than shredded nerves after the lorry tipped over and crushed his Fiesta at a railway bridge in Hockley on Monday.

The 21-year-old car - weighing less than half a tonne - was almost flattened after a crane on the back of the lorry clipped the bridge and tipped the entire load over.

Yesterday Mr Lee, of Graham Road in Hockley, was still shocked at how lucky he had been.

But Tony Jupp, managing director of CLC Construction Ltd of Doddingshurst near Brentwood, said they wanted to buy him a new car and lend him one of their company cars in the meantime.

He said: "When I saw the picture of the crushed car my first reaction was it must have been a fatality. I really thought there was no way someone could have got out of that. It was beyond belief."

"We are just glad he is not hurt. But we felt that the insurance he would have received for his car would have been minimal so we would like to buy him a replacement car."

Mr Lee said he was flabbergasted by the news.

He said: "I didn't think they'd make an offer like that."

Mr Jupp had visited him at home and had offered to buy him a year-old Fiesta but Mr Lee asked for a smaller Nissan Micra.

Mr Lee said: "He said they'd get me one, and in the meantime they've left me a company car, a new Ford Focus. I told him I've had enough shocks for this week!

"When they phoned and said the managing director was coming round I thought they were going to do more than ask how I was - maybe give me a bottle of something - but I never expected this."

Mr Jupp said both the driver and passenger in the lorry had been badly shaken by the incident but were otherwise fine.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.