A stretch of Hwy. 369 in north Forsyth was shut down for four hours Monday afternoon after a tractor trailer hauling sludge overturned and spilled its load.

Georgia State Patrol Trooper Michael Tennant said the driver was heading west on the road, which is also known as Matt Highway, when he went slightly off the side.

“He overcorrected, which caused his load to shift and caused him to overturn,” Tennant said.

The wreck happened about 3:41 p.m. just east of Rose Creek Drive.

The truck was carrying sludge from Atlanta to the Eagle Point landfill in northwest Forsyth, Tennant said.

“We could not open the roadway until they cleaned up all the materials,” he said.

Most of the spilled waste was loaded onto another truck, Tennant said, and then the fire department washed down the road to ensure the conditions weren’t hazardous to drivers.

The highway reopened about 7:40 p.m.

The driver, 45-year-old Malachi Snipes of Lawrenceville, received a warning for failure to maintain lane and a citation for driving a commercial vehicle without a valid commercial license, Tennant said.

Snipes was not injured in the wreck. The truck was registered to Global Trucking Inc. of Lilburn.