Thursday, September 27, 2012

Through the Windshield




A couple of us were stuck behind these loads on KS/CO 96 Monday - they had to get over in Sheridan Lake, CO, to meet with the Colorado DOT and get inspected. Those trailers are low. Real low. You can see behind the trailer on the second unit in the second picture what looks like an old, weathered and shattered railroad tie. That is what it is - it was apparently mostly buried and the trailers snagged it and pulled it out of the parking lot.

When these things move, and by the way, those are dump beds for huge mining trucks - people HAVE to pull over, and you do NOT pass 'em. I've gotten behind some in the past and they told me their load was twenty three feet wide. These were that or more - I was sure thinking twenty five.

The last one we were stuck behind pulled over on a narrow two lane road at an intersection and tried to squeeze over as much as possible. His trailer wheels fell in some potholes and that bed started rocking back and forth - made me nervous as H - E Double Toothpicks. It would be sooooo easy to dump something like that.

We haul sixteen wides frequently - that is what I did today - and that is wide enough for this tubby trucker, thank you very much!

2 comments:

CGHill said...

Now that's oversized. (I get antsy if I see something that wide and it's not an Abrams tank.)

Jess said...

We get some good size local loads, including the blades for the windmills they throw into the money pit. Usually, the really big loads are processing units fabricated at local shops and shipped in the wee hours of the morning for placement on a barge.

One oversize load really caught my eye one afternoon. After a double take, I realized it was the digging bucket for some huge excavator; probably mine related.

The bucket was at least 16 feet wide and on a trailer with a multitude of tires and dollies. Where it was going is beyond me, but I can say it was heading east.