A man who accidentally fell into the back of a dump truck reportedly survived the garbage ordeal by building himself a trash coffin.

The man told cops he had been inside a dumpster looking for his wallet when the entire thing was dumped into the back of a garbage truck bound for—no joke—Yolo County, CA.

To protect himself from suffocating in the wet tangled trash nightmare, he maneuvered pieces of lumber around himself to "build a coffin."

"The man said he was stuck in the truck for about an hour, but estimates show it was more like 3 or 3 1/2 hours," Lt. Martin Torres of the Yolo County Sheriff's Office told reporters. "The truck made several other pick-ups before arriving at the landfill, where the driver saw the man crawl out of his trash pile."

He was eventually rescued when the truck dumped its load at the Yolo County landfill, where the operator noticed him flopping around in the trash.

"He was lucky the truck was only half full," Torres said. "Had it been full, he would have certainly been crushed and suffocated to death."

[h/t UPI, image via KCRA]