Dear Editor,
For four years in the mid-1990s, I was a trucking company dispatcher. We hauled many things in open dump boxes and enclosed or low-bed trailers. Before any of my low-bed trucks turned a wheel loaded with an oversized load, they had to have a permit that outlined the height, width, and weight of the oversized load.
Being pre-internet and smartphones, I would receive a permit number and share that over the two-way radio and the driver would stop by one of the many scales to retrieve the permit. Also at the numerous Ministry of Transportation scales dotted around the region and province, officers could measure the oversized load to see if the permit matched the load size. If it did not, you could receive a fine.
Then, the truck driver would consult his/her map (no GPS) and plan a route that didn't involve any low overpasses, train bridges, etc., and if a pilot vehicle was required, I would dispatch one to the truck's location. If the route did involve a low highway crossing, the truck would leave the highway, drive around the low crossing, and re-enter the highway when safe to do so.
As an aside, if you were over-height or wider than 8'6", there were morning and evening curfews 鈥� times when the traffic was too heavy for high and wide trucks with pilot cars to mess up rush hour. Indeed if you were extremely high or wide, you would have to travel early morning or late evening, not during daylight hours.
I am proud to say we never hit an overpass or caused an accident.
None of the laws have changed since then. Sadly there are fewer Ministry of Transportation scales, to keep an eye on oversized loads, but I also believe there is less responsibility and training.
There is absolutely no reason trucks should be hitting overpasses. The same roads exist to take oversized loads around the train overpass on Highway 1 between 216th and 232nd Streets as existed back in the 1990s, as do all the other roads bypassing low crossings.
Reporter Matthew Claxton's reporting, "In May, 91原创 saw the $19.5 million rebuilt Glover Road overpass open. The new overpass is much taller than the 4.3 m clearance of the old, 1960s-built structure. In the coming years, the nearby rail overpass, which is 4.4m, is also to be replaced, as are the 232 and 264 Street highway interchanges. All will be raised to modern height standards." Matthew knows the clearance of these overpasses, and if he were driving the truck with a load over 4.3 or 4.4m high, he would know to go around, and he isn't a truck driver. (I don't think.)
He goes on to close his article explaining the old Glover Road overpass was one of the most frequently struck. Our company hauled oversized loads from Vancouver to the Fraser Valley in the 1990s and drove on this same highway. Both of these overpasses and all the others mentioned were there then, and our professional truck drivers never hit any of them, because they knew they had to go around.
I am not suggesting these overpasses don't need the upgrades required of our growing population and new safety standards. I am suggesting the laws governing our highways, and the overpasses crossing those highways haven't changed in over 50 years and yet are continually being hit.
I don't know all the answers; certainly spending millions and millions of dollars to raise all the overpasses is one solution 鈥� and so are education and enforcement. Both would limit overpass strikes, but the latter wouldn't raise our taxes.
Rob Hunt, Walnut Grove
