(By Greg Rourke) – Truck length and weight laws are fairly standardized across the country. Your fairly common 48 to 53 foot flatbed or van trailer can weigh 80,000 pounds, with restrictions on how much weight can be on each axle, or groups of axles. This allows freight to move easily down the superslab (trucker speak for Interstate highways). However, laws governing some bulk commodities such as liquid in tanks and stuff hauled in dump trucks are governed by a patchwork of state laws. This results in unique trucks that are often land locked in their own state. What’s legal in one state may not be legal in a neighboring state.
States use bridge formulas to determine how much weight a truck can haul. They go by overall length, from the center of the steer axle to the center of rear axle or tandems. Then they figure distance between the axle groups and weight on each group. It’s a complicated system. When yours truly was trucking I once sat at a scale house (or “chicken coop” in trucker speak) for 45 minutes while the weighmaster figured out how many laws I had violated and how big the fine was. I’m sure the overweight fines I incurred over my trucking years paid to repave Interstate 88 from mile marker 98 through mile marker 133, inclusive.
Dump truckers seem to have the most innovative ways to maximize payloads. Here in the Land of Lincoln, we use tandem axle tractors and 26 foot dump trailers, and can weigh 72,000 pounds. In neighboring Wisconsin they use a straight truck with 4 axles under the box and haul the same weight. But as is often the case, in California they do it very differently.
Cali uses what’s known as a transfer dump. They have a fairly common tandem axle dump truck, then a trailer with another box on it and a long tongue to comply with the bridge formula. The weight is spread out over a longer distance, so more weight can be carried. They can scale 80,000 pounds this way. The way this works is the unhook the trailer and dump the load in the truck. Then they back the truck up to the trailer and use an air powered motor to run the box on the trailer into the truck. They dump that, then run it back onto the trailer. This system saves the weight of having hydraulics on the trailer. When they hook the trailer back to the truck, they put the truck in reverse with the brakes released and the engine off. Then they use a button on back of the truck to crank the starter and back the truck up. Clever, no?
This brings us to this video. Come up with anything transportation related and you just know some joker will come up with a way to race it. Here we have a competitor at a truck rodeo. No idea how well he did, but he certainly did better than I could have done.
CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO BE TAKEN TO THE VIDEO!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG86rOoXq8E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG86rOoXq8E
