BangShifter Jake Salmonson shot us the link on this pretty neat story that came from the Duluth, Minnesota area and centers around the troubles that a heavy haul team was having with moving a 187-ton piece of an oil refinery through town. Numbing cold temps, mechanical issues, and 187-crushing tons all combined to make these guys clench their teeth and try to figure a way to gut through what had to be a frustrating day at the office. One of the things we often talk about with these heavy hauling jobs is the planning that is done to scout the route ahead of time. The scouts did a fine job with their work this time but there was one thing that they could not account for and that was the cold and how it would come to hamper the mechanical end of this mission.
As the story linked below will tell you in greater depth, the truck pulling the massive piece of the equipment and the trailer it was on got stuck on Goat Hill in Duluth, Minnesota on Tuesday. The ice was annoying and a function of the bitter cold the area has been experiencing lately. Things pretty much went downhill from there as the truck broke a driveshaft apparently trying to free itself from the ice and then the freezing began. Because the rig sat dormant for so long the brakes on the trailer started freezing and since this is one of those awesome modular trailers with a ton of wheels, it also has a ton of brakes. Workers were thawing brakes only to find that as they thawed some others would freeze and by the time they thawed them, the original brakes had frozen again. Flabbergasted, they had no choice but to let things take their course and wait for conditions to improve.
Finally on Friday the whole works was moved to a siding up the road where it was no longer blocking traffic, etc but as best we know the whole setup is still sitting in Duluth awaiting the restart of its trip to Provo, Utah. That tip will be a long one, even if no other problems occur because the top travel speed the whole thing will see is 13mph. Wow. Good luck boys, hope you don’t make the papers again!
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL STORY ON THIS STUBBORN HEAVY HAUL LOAD
Somewhere there’s a dispatcher losing his mind right now.
We lived outside Duluth for a few years in the 80’s. Now and then oversize loads came up the Seaway and were offloaded in the harbor to appropriately sized trailers such as this or corresponding rail cars. I don’t recall any incidents like this one, but OTOH it seems like most loads moved when it was “warm” out, by Duluth standards anyway.
Pretty sad. A little planning n forethought coulda gone a long way. Go see some of the loads/terrain and weather the boys move here in northern B.C. and Alberta every day without these kinda embarrassing fails.
Hmmm.. Did someone not consider the at that it gets cold in Duluth in January? Perhaps moving it when it’s not cold?
Maybe a bit more planning was needed.
Wait until later? When millions of dollars are on the line, which they usually are in big hauls like this, you can’t wait. We aren’t talking about Wal-Mart not getting it’s next shipment of crap, but an oil refinery not getting its parts on time.
The wife and I were in Duluth at that time for New Years and actually saw this live. They had Piedmont Ave closed the whole time we were there. Kinda cool seeing it here on Bangshift.