The truck's windscreen was smashed with a car-jack. PHOTO: STEPHEN JAQUIERY

A man alleged to have assaulted a truck driver and smashed the vehicle's windscreen with a car-jack has been arrested.

The bread truck driver was forcibly stopped, attacked and had his truck reversed into during the road rage incident near Henley on Tuesday.

Police said a 37-year-old man was arrested in Balclutha yesterday afternoon and would be appearing in court today.

He had been charged with willful damage, assault with a weapon, reckless driving and possessing a weapon.

The incident unfolded as the Coupland’s Bakeries driver was finishing his shift, driving between Waihola and Dunedin on State Highway 1, when an older-model, cream-coloured ute overtook him.

The truck driver said when the ute driver passed him, he showed him his middle finger and then crossed over, and did a "hard brake" in front of the truck.

When they reached the traffic lights in place at the Taieri River Bridge, the ute driver swiftly exited his vehicle, climbed on to the truck’s footstep and started assaulting the him through the window, the driver said.

"He started punching me. I managed to push him off."

The man then went back to his ute, where a woman passenger handed him some kind of stick.

The truck driver had exited his truck, when the man came back and started hitting him with the stick.

"I tried to hold him off and [the woman] was yelling at me to get back in the truck.

"He then picked up a jack and smashed my front windscreen."

The man got back into his ute and reversed into the truck, damaging it with his tow ball.