‘Go slow’

What does it take to carry extra-large and superloads, like one 900,000-plus pounds and almost as long as a football field, destined for a manufacturing site?

“Go slow, be cautious, be safe,” answered 55-year-old Gary Lipka, an owner-operator leased on to Edwards Moving & Rigging, which since early this year has been transporting two dozen pieces of machinery from the Ohio River to an Intel Corporation construction site in central Ohio.

We met Lipka while in Waverly, Ohio, in mid-July to watch a portion of one move. He had temporarily parked an Edwards-owned Peterbilt 379 “prime mover” on Emmitt Avenue – U.S. 23 as it passes through the small city – as the loaded rig inched northward behind him. He explained that he’d hook onto the lead truck to help pull the rig up a grade a few miles north of town.

The cargo was an air processor known as a “cold box” used in the silicon chip manufacturing process. It measures approximately 23 feet tall, 20 feet wide and 280 feet long and weighs 916,000 pounds. The processor was built in Europe and carried by barge across the Atlantic Ocean, into the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to a port in southern Ohio.

Edwards crews transferred it to a pair of multi-axle-line transporters to carry it more than 100 miles to the construction site. It’s one of four such units that will be erected there, and this was the second one to be handled. The combined weight, including the two Goldhofer 64-wheel transporters, a 16-wheel rear steering unit and two Kenworth C500 prime movers, was well over a million pounds.

Lipka said he’d been working for Edwards for about 25 years after eight years of more normal truck driving, which he found “boring.”

The variety and challenges of heavy-haul transportation appealed to him, and that’s what he’s enjoyed since signing on with Edwards. He lives with his wife in Elizabeth, Ind., across the Ohio River from Shelbyville, Ky., where the company’s headquartered – though he’s away a lot when this type of work begins.

Otherwise, Lipka drives his own tractor, a 2000 long-nose Freightliner Classic with which he hauls smaller loads for Edwards, pulling flatbed, drop-deck and lowboy trailers. Cargo includes heavy construction materials and automotive components.

This day, he was pacing the massive rig as it moved at walking speeds through Waverly, stopping often as contractors raised utility lines and traffic signals to allow the tall load to pass. Lipka said there were about 20 Ohio State Patrol troopers escorting the procession and 20 bucket trucks – each with two or three men dealing with overhead obstructions – plus guys far ahead using long measuring poles to identify what needed to be hiked out of the way. That totaled maybe 100 people in all on this move.

Matt Bruning, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation, said each of the four moves takes nine days to make the slow journey over highways, county roads and city streets on the way to the 1,000-acre site in Licking County. He added that ODOT had to first evaluate the proposed route to be sure that pavement and bridge strength and overall clearances were sufficient to take the loads’ weight and size. Then appropriate permits were issued.

Newspapers and TV news outlets have been reporting on the movements due to their novelty and because they disrupt traffic while underway.

In Waverly, trucks and cars in both directions waited more than an hour as the convoy made its way through town. But no one seemed overly irked, because the spectacle was so unusual and interesting. People lined up along the edge of the street to watch.

A contingent of Intel employees led by Emily Smith, director of community relations in Ohio, cheered as the rig passed their vantage point. They’d set up a canopy as a base to answer citizens’ questions about the project. Smith explained that at their final destination, the cold box’s four separators would stand on end and would extract nitrogen, oxygen, argon and several “trace” gasses that comprise air, using them in the manufacturing process. This is less costly than buying the gasses from a commercial supplier.

The high-profile construction project as a whole – with a $28 billion price tag – eventually will supply microchips used in products like laptop computers, cars and heavy trucks.

About 7,000 construction workers are building two factories, called “fabs.” And 3,000 specially trained people will be employed by Intel when chip manufacturing commences in three to five years, Smith said.

Scores of microchips are used in each heavy truck, and a serious shortage of them several years ago made buying new trucks difficult. Most chips are made overseas, so the federal government is subsidizing the Intel project and others like it to bring more chip-making to the U.S.

Already, the Intel project has caused profound changes in this once-rural area in Ohio, upsetting some residents but making business-oriented folks happy about the huge economic boost. Although the cold box might be among the biggest and heaviest objects ever moved, no one from Intel or Edwards made that claim – and a web search reveals others that in fact were larger and heavier. But this one clearly was making trucker Gary Lipka’s day. LL