No Ground clearance. It's designed exclusively for use on Air Port taxi-ways.
Getting it off the trailer was an adventure in itself seeing as they had me to deliver it to a container yard in Seattle Wa. You've got to love Freight Agents.
Another interesting aspect of that trip.
It seems that in Oregon it's not allowed for oversize to run Saturday after noon or Sunday between Memorial day and Labor day. No no no....might inconvience the fisherman....might scare them.....tourist dollars don't you know.
I didn't know that. I rolled into the Port of Entry at Farewell Bend Oregon ...fat ...dumb and happy a little after noon on a bright and sunny Sunday. The nice gentleman with the ticket book was very happy to educate me as to my ignorance of the laws of oversize movment in his state.....expensive education. (Oregon's oversize permits run eight pages....most other state's run two)
Can't run in the daytime....on Sunday. Nope. I'd have to sit until sunset......or wait until monday morning.
Sunset? Well yeah....it would have been OK to run at night.
It's OK though to run AT NIGHT. (under ten foot wide....I was a shade less than nine.)
At night. I still shudder to think.
This is what some of us truckers call Cabbage hill.
On the map it's Meachum Summit.
I just come over it the other day is why I have these pictures.
It's between the port of entry that I was stopped at and where I had to go. I'd have had to gone over it. At night.
Steep bastard aint it? Also twisty. Imagine me just around one of those (many) curves....out of sight....at 15 mph. The Automobile speed limit in Oregon is 65...for trucks it's 55....and we all know that folks are very good at obeying the speed limit....right?
There's a sign on top of the hill. It indicates that at 80,000 gross weight a truck should only run at 20 mph. There are TWO runaway truck escape ramps on this hill. It's about six miles of six to eight percent downgrade.
Notice the gauge? I caught the tach at about 1700 rpm. Road speed at about 20.
That grossing only 109,000 lbs as I am with this excavator....so I guess I was speeding. My Jake brakes were holding me though....I wasn't using my service brakes. That way they were staying nice and cool if I DID need them. At 20 mph with cool brakes I think I could stop pretty fast.
With the Tug I would have been grossing about 140,000.....probably been going about 10...for the Jakes to hold me.
C
I could have come off cabbage ....legally......at night.
I didn't. I waited until monday morning.
At
No comments:
Post a Comment