When truckers don't think...

coonie minnie

Well-known Member
Near us is the small village of Mapleton. In Mapleton is a railroad overpass- its been there since the railroad was built in 1915.

The bridge creates a low clearance situation, and it is posted for miles in either direction. Despite this, it gets hit by trucks at least once per month, sometimes 2 or even 3 times in a month.

Here are some pics of today's latest. I thought you'd enjoy!
<image src="http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/photos/mvphoto9036.jpg"/>

<image src="http://forums.yesterdaystractors.com/photos/mvphoto9037.jpg"/>
 
The worst one was when a backhoe got ripped off a flatbed at about 40 miles an hour... remarkably, the bridge has never budged.
 
I used to pull a tank. Once I was going toward a town in Ohio, Delaware I think. It was a two lane road and I was not in a big hurry. This truck pulling a box van passed me going way above the speed limit. There was a railroad overpass entering this town. When I went through the overpass he was sitting along the road with the whole top of the van behind him like this truck. It was a young kid, I would guess he was job hunting after that.
 
Belt Parkway in Brooklyn,N.Y. used to be one of these a week where it intersects with the F train overpass. The one in the photo tore off and wrinkled up perfectly, just like a can opener did it.
 
drove truck for 30 years never used a GPS I could read a commercial road map nowadays drivers just follow what it says and there is the result &#128667;
 
From the look of things, he must have been going along at a good clip.
Funny thing. When I went to CDL school, that was one of the things that was emphasized over and over was looking out for low clearances. Some guys never seem to get it.
 
A bridge over I-70 in western Kansas wasn't so fortunate about 10 years ago. A too-tall excavator's boom got shoved right up through the overpass and was sticking out of the roadway at the top. Must have been quite a jolt to the driver.
 
You have to look up the famous 11-8 bridge, there are several videos on the many crashes it has had. They put a beam across to collect the tops of ticks, so the bridge doesn't get so much damage.

Paul
11foot8
 
It might be interesting to measure the actual clearance. Maybe they have repaved a couple of times since the signs were posted. Just a thought.
 
Holy cow!

Looks just like heavy duty aluminum foil... like you could use to grill a really large Hobo meal in.
 
THAT IS CALLED D.W.H.U.A. "driving with head up a**" I got my class 1 licience in 1967 and have held it for the last 50 years, if your hauling on a road you've never been on and you see the warning signs of overhead height restrictions you slow down put your 4 ways on and if it looks to close stop and have a look, the one thing you better know as a truck driver is the height and width of the load your pulling long before you leave the yard! every van i"ve ever pulled had both the height and length stenciled on it from the factory. looking at these pics my guess would be I phone 5 distraction has struck again :roll:
 
I'm in agreement with Grizz02. I drove a truck for decades and never once used a GPS, and never had an accident. This younger generation relies on the darn things and just go where the gizzmo says, blinding putting their faith in it. This is the result.

The old guys call these types steering wheel holders, not truck drivers.
 
I drove for a commercial carrier 38 years and never topped a trailer or jack knifed a trailer. I did take down a number of telephone and electric lines. I drove a 4 state area and carried about a 130 maps and most were of the major towns that we delivered in. That bridge was marked good and no reason for hitting it just stupid.
 
My Dad was an over the road trucker most of his life. There were some low clearance overpasses in our town 3 or 4. He would never take the streets and roads that lead to those in the family car. Said he pretended like they did not exist, so he would not inadvertently drive his tractor trailer rig down those street. Just a little nugget from say about 57 years ago. gobble
 
I agree. What the h**l would I be using tools such as a GPS device to make my job safer and more efficient.
 
By any chance you mean Mapleton Iowa? Other points,
Operator of this vehicle was not a trucker, It was a steering wheel holder.
Likely went through a CDL mill. Likely operating questionable equipment. Was told will make
big$$$ probably making $25,000 or less per year. If the app did not say stop why stop?
Just go to any truckstop and you will see them complete with flip-flops and pajama bottoms.
 
I'm sure the driver's excuse was, "I DIDN'T SEE IT!"

Probably fatigued. Definitely not paying attention.

This is why truckers are required to keep log books and have mandatory downtime requirements, as much as you truck drivers wail and moan about them. If we didn't there would be a whole lot more of these shenanigans going on. The system was never designed to be perfect, it was designed to stem the tide.
 
There is a short narrow bridge with a sharp curve past my place that gets tractor trailers they can't make the curve but many try.They have to back up about 3/4 mile to my farm entrance to get turned around.
 
(quoted from post at 04:33:13 01/12/18) A bridge over I-70 in western Kansas wasn't so fortunate about 10 years ago. A too-tall excavator's boom got shoved right up through the overpass and was sticking out of the roadway at the top. Must have been quite a jolt to the driver.
hat was just west of HAYS Kansas, Had to take detour for a week.
 
I was loading my sprayer in the parking lot of Dunnheisen construction in Waterloo, WI about 10 years ago. There was a power pole on the corner of the driveway.

An Alsum produce truck pulled into the parking lot and completely obliterated the pole in the turn. I was ducking and running for cover as the sparking lines dropped. They were still connected, and the pole was still there, but only about 4 feet tall when he got done rolling over it. He jumps out of his truck and walks over to me and asks if I knew where such-and-such a place was.

I say, "Did you see what you just did!?!"

He looks around, sees the busted off pole and wires hanging, and says, "I didn't do that, you must've done it!" Then immediately after that says,"Is there another way outta here?"

I say, "Yeah, call 911 and tell them what you did"

"No, I mean to leave, I gotta get outta here!"

So I called 911. He kept trying to blame me the whole time, the guy with the sprayer sitting next to a tender truck with a hose connected. Luckily, no one believed him.
 
Reminded me of a song, Wolf Creek Pass.

"Sign says clearance to the twelve-foot line, but the chickens was stacked to thirteen-nine. Well we shot that tunnel at a hundred-and-ten, like gas through a funnel and eggs through a hen, and we took that top row of chickens off slicker than scum off a Lousiana swamp. Went down and around and around and down 'til we run outta ground at the edge of town. Bashed into the side of the feed store... In downtown Pagosa Springs."
 
It always makes me chuckle to hear old timers claim new drivers are worse than they were when they were newby drivers when statistics clearly show that new drivers are safer than at any time in trucking history. And they also firget that they were the newby drivers at one time and the old timers said the same about them. But the funniest thing about it is all those low bridge signs posted for miles are there because those same "expert" well trained old timers hit those bridges with such regularity that the government had to spend money on signs to stop them from hitting those bridges way back then. It could be that those that made it through a long career without a serious accident were just luckier than the others. I have not had a major accident yet, but I've been lucky.
 
Anyone remember when most truck drivers wore a short billed hat with the badge. When I was unloading trucks in the 1950's most over the road drivers also wore uniforms. Delivery drivers didn't but they had the hat.
 
(quoted from post at 01:25:29 01/12/18) THAT IS CALLED D.W.H.U.A. "driving with head up a**"

Gotta get with the times guy! The PC version if that is called a "Cranial/Rectal Inversion". I'd guess 95% of the people driving our roads, myself included, have that issue on a regualr basis! :lol:
 
Boom wasn't to tall, the hoe was loaded backwards, running and the boom wasn't even lowered down. Last I heard that driver was still in the pokey. Not sure about the company, but the driver was arrested on all kinds of drug charges.
 
I'm tickled someone else remembers the greatest song ever written..........(along with others he put out)
That had me laughing hysterically in the late 60s when I first heard it, and being stationed in Colorado
at the time, it fit. CW McCall is a legend
 
Every trucker should know what the height of his vehicle is. He should also be able to read a clearance sign. This is not rocket science!
However, there needs to be some standards as to posting the signs. In New York, signs are posted a foot or more lower than actual clearance. I have many times driven under bridges marked 12'2" with a 13'6" trailer and never even came close to hitting. BUT, the first time I saw that bridge, it sure got my attention. I stopped and put on the flashers, approached the bridge carefully, and looked to see if it would hit. Since it did not, I continued until I came out the other side. After that, I knew whether or not I would hit it.
I have encountered a few in PA that are deliberately posted lower than actual to discourage truckers from using those routes.
In any case, it is still the driver's responsibility to not hit bridges.
 
Maybe they should put up a billboard with that picture on it on each side. More than likely they will force the RR to make a higher bridge though.
 
I applied for a job at the Rawsonville, MI Ford plant in 1965 and was waiting around for my physical with a bunch of other guys applying, and I asked one little guy, what kinda work did you do? He replied truck driver. I asked why arn't you still doing that? He said I took a 12' truck under a 11' bridge.
 
At that rate might be fun to get the guys together get some chairs maybe some signs like 0 to 10 and of coarse beer and wait for the fun to come rolling into town and hold up signs rating damage kinda what people do at boat launches &#128667;
 
Great! I think my favorite is seeing those campers get cleaned off. Honey! The AC isn't working!!! And the second load of straw. He just watched his colleague in the front truck hit it... wouldn't you stop and think?
 
That happened in MN, a construction company owner hit an overpass with an excavator on a lowboy. He had a good lawyer and found the road had been resurfaced and was 2 inches less than the stated height, he got off. Us taxpayers paid about a million to rebuild the overpass!
 

It happens periodically...Not too long ago some truck driver knocked down a bridge-span of May avenue over NW expressway in OKC

Years ago our JD dealership truck driver was going to deliver a brand-new 8650 to a customer. The trucker got as far as the highway under-pass where 33 highway goes under the railroad tracks...that's where he cleaned the muffler..intake pipe and entire top of the tractor's cab plum off the big four wheel drive Deere!

That particular customer never would've accepted the new tractor if he had known what happened to it...so we rebuilt the 8650 in tip-top secret...hiding it during the day...and working on the wrecked Deere at night in the shop...he never knew why his new Deere took so long to get!!...I'm not even sure the local authorities knew our driver clobbered the railroad over-pass!
 
Not trying to defend the driver but looking at the second photo it appears the direction he was going the road had a slight downhill that allowed enough clearance for the tractor to get under then as soon as his front wheels hit the slight uphill past the bridge it raised the trailer up enough to make contact.

Likely he could have bobtailed under the bridge with a 13 foot tall sleeper and cleared the bridge, picked up a 13 foot tall trailer 10 minutes later and not thought twice that the grade was going to turn things into a bad day real fast.

Bottom line it is still his fault but if it gets hit as often as you say there must be something beyond stupidity contributing to it.
 
well it says something for the guys that built that bridge too lol i want a house built by them
 
Don't know how true it is, but I heard once of a truck getting stuck under an overpass. Several men were trying to figure out how to get it out.

A 10 year old boy kept trying to say something, and the men kept hushing him. Finally the kid yelled, "Why don't you let the air out of the tires?"

Duh!
 
Funny comments about GPS. SIL has one in the truck he drives. Expensive sucker too. It gives his routes around low bridges and weight restricted roads.

Rick
 
The town would be attitude ahead if it put up a swinging padded crossbar like on a parking ramp or drive through a block ahead of the overpass. Simple and direct reminder of the nasty consequences, and cheap. Jim
 
Yea they were running people off the exit ramp and back on to get around it. I don't think the excavator was running but he did load it boom forward and when it hit it was just like jamming a pole under a roof broke the trailer in half he was hauling it on. If he had it boom back it would not have happened would have it but just pushed the boom down.
 
(quoted from post at 10:05:14 01/12/18) Maybe they should put up a billboard with that picture on it on each side. More than likely they will force the RR to make a higher bridge though.

RR will tell the town to go pound sand as their bridge was likely there first.
Town can spend the dollars to excavate and lower the road or build their own bridge over it.
 
(quoted from post at 09:36:44 01/12/18) The town would be attitude ahead if it put up a swinging padded crossbar like on a parking ramp or drive through a block ahead of the overpass. Simple and direct reminder of the nasty consequences, and cheap. Jim
What? And lose all the revenue made from the calls and responses? *lol*
 
(quoted from post at 09:39:01 01/12/18) However, there needs to be some standards as to posting the signs. In New York, signs are posted a foot or more lower than actual clearance. I have many times driven under bridges marked 12'2" with a 13'6" trailer and never even came close to hitting. I have encountered a few in PA that are deliberately posted lower than actual to discourage truckers from using those routes.
In any case, it is still the driver's responsibility to not hit bridges.

What if the bridge has an arched bottom?
The clearance height sign indicates the lowest point that a wide load might hit. So yes, a normal width 13' rig could pass thru even if it is posted as being 12'-2".
And obviously trying to explain that on a warning sign would not work because some can't even heed the current warning signs.
 
that reminds me of a story a driver told me he use to drive for greyhound and got fired I asked him how come he said he hit a dog I said they fired you for hitting a dog he said yeah it was on the back of a another bus &#128547;
 
Back when I was pulling mobile homes across county I had one time where D.O.T. had routed me in such a way if I had gone there way I would not have been able to go under an under pass and there was also no place to turn around in the area either. But a number of truckers let us know so we could take a route around it but even then is I had been 4 inches wider I would not have made it across a narrow bridge. Drove across the bridge in 1st gear at an idle with my escort driver standing in front of me to guide me across
 
Here's the deal... I'm on the township board. We have no say in the matter, as it is a county road. We have to go with our squads and pick up the peices, though. Union Pacific owns the bridge, and doesn't want to change it.

I don't blame them... they'd have to regrade perhaps half a mile in either direction, rebuild some at grade crossings in that half mile, and re-do the bridge. It wouldn't be cheap, and they get no benefit. Excavating out below is difficult, as the roadbed in that area is close to the water table, and if it were dug low enough to get to legal height, there are times when water might be over the road, creating another dangerous situation.

The reality is there are multiple signs in either direction for miles. Nobody reads them, or understands what they mean.
 
And they send you into posted no tresspassing private drives miles from where you are wanting to go. Have had that happen to my place. I will not have one of those things.
 
When dad worked at the JD dealer. They sold a guy a new combine either a 55 or 95. The owner got stuck under the under pass. The cab was too tall.
 
(quoted from post at 22:36:38 01/11/18) You have to look up the famous 11-8 bridge, there are several videos on the many crashes it has had. They put a beam across to collect the tops of ticks, so the bridge doesn't get so much damage.

Paul
11foot8
he way some of those trucks bounced I sure hope the drivers had their seat belts fastened, or there would also be a bulge in the roof of the cab.
 
I have seen some really low under passes with overhead structures on each side of the bridge. And then there were three foot long steel pipes dangling from log chains.
Positioned with the lower ends at the clearance height or lower.
Smacking into them wakes up a lot of truckers.

Some local authorities merely chose to post a few signs and call it good.

Then charge the trucker for ignoring the signs in order to collect some fines. And fill the pockets of some wrecker company.
 
Hi

There is a bridge like that about 1/2 hour north west of us, It has flashing warning lights for over height, and a detour on a gravel road round it on both sides. If your truck is over height and trips the lights to make them flash, this is all well sign posted and the lights are red and so bright you can't miss them!!!!!!!.

The biggest problem seems to be the Government give the "New Canadian" as they call them class 1 Drivers the tests with translators in their own language, but once they pass they can't read or speak English or french that's on the signs, so they ignore the signs and the lights. The pictures I get to see look real like this or the trailers still under the bridge.

Regards Robert
 
Last Tuesday we had a boom truck driving past a car lot, the driver had forgotten to hook the cable on the boom to the ring. He didn't realize that the boom was swinging to the side until it was too late. he hit the brakes and it went completely sideways and took out 2 utility poles which landed on cars. The guy got scared and took off. I understand the police have finally found him.

Steven
 
My dad hauled cars for years, prior to that he was a UPS DTS (Driver Training School Instructor) teaching new UPS hires to drive semi truck in the Chicago area and drove feeders (UPS speak for tractor/trailer units). Worse wreck he was ever in wasn't his fault he was bobtailing North out of Chicago on the Tri-State tollway when some idiot hit the back of his tractor, and it spun and fell off the overpass, he was shaken up but walked away from it. He would joke while hauling cars the if the overpass looked a little low he'd floor it and drop a gear or two, explaining if you take the top of a car the'll fire you, if you take the top off of three cars they'll still fire you but at least you'll be a legend at the terminal.
 

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