diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index f5a405c1291..0970cc8b8c9 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -44,6 +44,7 @@
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Speedup collection of results from ingesters in the querier [#4100](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4100) (@electron0zero)
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Speedup DistinctValue collector and exit early for ingesters [#4104](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4104) (@electron0zero)
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Add disk caching in ingester SearchTagValuesV2 for completed blocks [#4069](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4069) (@electron0zero)
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Add a max flush attempts and metric to the metrics generator [#4254](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4254) (@joe-elliott)
 * [BUGFIX] Replace hedged requests roundtrips total with a counter. [#4063](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4063) [#4078](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4078) (@galalen)
 * [BUGFIX] Metrics generators: Correctly drop from the ring before stopping ingestion to reduce drops during a rollout. [#4101](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4101) (@joe-elliott)
 * [BUGFIX] Correctly handle 400 Bad Request and 404 Not Found in gRPC streaming [#4144](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4144) (@mapno)
diff --git a/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/metrics.go b/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/metrics.go
index 3573f9982ba..aaa8bbe41f9 100644
--- a/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/metrics.go
+++ b/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/metrics.go
@@ -74,4 +74,10 @@ var (
 		Name:      "flush_queue_size",
 		Help:      "Size of the flush queue",
 	}, []string{"tenant"})
+	metricFailedFlushes = promauto.NewCounter(prometheus.CounterOpts{
+		Namespace: namespace,
+		Subsystem: subsystem,
+		Name:      "failed_flushes_total",
+		Help:      "The total number of failed flushes",
+	})
 )
diff --git a/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/processor.go b/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/processor.go
index d2ad9bd7e44..6591b34087c 100644
--- a/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/processor.go
+++ b/modules/generator/processor/localblocks/processor.go
@@ -34,7 +34,10 @@ import (
 
 var tracer = otel.Tracer("modules/generator/processor/localblocks")
 
-const timeBuffer = 5 * time.Minute
+const (
+	timeBuffer       = 5 * time.Minute
+	maxFlushAttempts = 100
+)
 
 // ProcessorOverrides is just the set of overrides needed here.
 type ProcessorOverrides interface {
@@ -276,16 +279,36 @@ func (p *Processor) flushLoop() {
 
 		op := o.(*flushOp)
 		op.attempts++
+
+		if op.attempts > maxFlushAttempts {
+			_ = level.Error(p.logger).Log("msg", "failed to flush block after max attempts", "tenant", p.tenant, "block", op.blockID, "attempts", op.attempts)
+
+			// attempt to delete the block
+			p.blocksMtx.Lock()
+			err := p.wal.LocalBackend().ClearBlock(op.blockID, p.tenant)
+			if err != nil {
+				_ = level.Error(p.logger).Log("msg", "failed to clear corrupt block", "tenant", p.tenant, "block", op.blockID, "err", err)
+			}
+			delete(p.completeBlocks, op.blockID)
+			p.blocksMtx.Unlock()
+
+			continue
+		}
+
 		err := p.flushBlock(op.blockID)
 		if err != nil {
-			_ = level.Error(p.logger).Log("msg", "failed to flush a block", "err", err)
+			_ = level.Info(p.logger).Log("msg", "re-queueing block for flushing", "block", op.blockID, "attempts", op.attempts, "err", err)
+			metricFailedFlushes.Inc()
 
-			_ = level.Info(p.logger).Log("msg", "re-queueing block for flushing", "block", op.blockID, "attempts", op.attempts)
-			op.at = time.Now().Add(op.backoff())
+			delay := op.backoff()
+			op.at = time.Now().Add(delay)
 
-			if _, err := p.flushqueue.Enqueue(op); err != nil {
-				_ = level.Error(p.logger).Log("msg", "failed to requeue block for flushing", "err", err)
-			}
+			go func() {
+				time.Sleep(delay)
+				if _, err := p.flushqueue.Enqueue(op); err != nil {
+					_ = level.Error(p.logger).Log("msg", "failed to requeue block for flushing", "err", err)
+				}
+			}()
 		}
 	}
 }