A Gold Coast man said he was just in the “right place at the right time”, after he pulled a semi-conscious truck driver from a flaming wreck to safety on the M1 yesterday.

Dramatic footage shows the moment Athen Barnaby scrambled up the cab of a truck which was lying on its side spewing out thick, black smoke, and dragged the 60-year-old driver to safety, moments before cargo in the truck exploded.

The driver, who had broken his leg, had only managed to get himself through the window, after the southbound truck swerved into a guardrail about 2pm and crashed on an M1 bridge, near Exit 69, over the Nerang river.

“We were all yelling at him, saying, ‘mate, you got to get out of there, this thing is going to blow,” Mr Barnaby told The Today Show.

“He was yelling back saying he couldn’t see, he couldn’t see, he managed to get himself out of the window”.

Mr Barnaby credited a surge of adrenaline - as well as his trusty thongs – with helping him pull off the heroic rescue.

“I didn’t feel the heat much at all, I think it was just the adrenaline. I had my thick thongs on, and I just climbed straight up wherever I could find the angle.

“That’s all I had – [they were] one inch thick. I lost the other half by the way!”

The crash caused hours of traffic gridlock, with all lanes of the M1 only reopening this morning.

The truck driver is in a stable condition in hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.

As for Mr Barnaby, he said he would have stepped in to help “ten times over”, and was now focused on opening an antiques shop with his wife.