What a mess!

Firefighters were called to refuse truck fire this afternoon on Yarrow Street in Invercargill.

"Unfortunately this happens on a semi-regular basis and the safest way for them to deal with it is to actually dump the rubbish out so we can extinguish it on the road," a Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokesman said.

Three crews responded, two Invercargill pumps and one from Kingswell, but only one crew was needed to extinguish the blaze and help with the clean up job.

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They arrived on scene, near Briscoes, at 12.42pm and were onsite for about an hour-and-a-half.

It's understood the truck belongs to commercial waste collectors Clearaway Skips, managed by Southern Transport Co. Ltd, a company owned by HW Richardson Group.

But the firm's waste supervisor Nick Templeton did not want to comment on the incident.