Heavy hauling

For drivers with some miles under their belts, there isn’t much they could see on the road that would surprise them. However, that might not be true for those recently navigating the highways of North Dakota.

That’s because a superload weighing in at nearly 1 million pounds was making its way across the state.

To say this was a heavy haul feels almost like an understatement. The load – a steam turbine headed for Saskatchewan, Canada – weighed in at a whopping 976,800 pounds. That’s the equivalent of four loaded railcars.

If the weight wasn’t enough to impress you, the length and width of the massive load certainly will. The load had a measured width of 24 feet, 11 inches, nearly four times the width of a standard semitrailer, and its height was just over 18 feet. As for the length, at 344 feet, 10 inches, the gigantic rig was essentially a rolling football field.

The enormous weight – along with the other dimensions of the load – made for a slow trek. Moving at a max speed of around 25-30 mph, the load departed on Oct. 31 from Duluth, Minn., and arrived at its destination on Nov. 18. Deducting the several days lost to weather delays (winter weather comes early in that part of the country), it took a total of 13 working days to complete the move. The load crossed through portions of four states: Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Hauling a load that size takes plenty of muscle.

A total of three trucks – one pull truck and two push trucks – were used to move the enormous load to its final destination. The trailers used to secure the load featured a bolster-to-bolster design, which allowed the trailer to articulate under the load helping to maneuver around turns. With 20 axle lines under the trailer, the heavy-haul rig had 36 axles in total.

Communication is key to a successful haul, as it takes all three drivers working together to maneuver the massive rig. The driver in the pull truck serves as the lead, letting the two push truck drivers know when to speed up or hit the brakes. It takes all three trucks, along with axle brakes along the massive trailer, to slow the mega-load down.

With the drivers, along with escorts at the front and rear, it took a crew of seven people to navigate the load along the approved route.

The company behind the move was Barnhart Crane and Rigging. According to its website, the Memphis, Tenn.-based company specializes “in the lifting, heavy-rigging and heavy hauling of major components used in American industry.” Founded in 1969, the family-owned company has over 50 years of experience.

That experience can be invaluable, especially when dealing with a haul like this. Moving nearly a million pounds takes a lot of careful planning and a little finesse. Matt Scrip is a senior project manager with Barnhart Crane and Rigging. He says his company draws on that experience to make the planning process go more smoothly.

“What we’ve done over the years is build a database,” Scrip said. “We log every haul we do, what rig we utilized. The weight, width and height of the piece. And we save all that info in a database, and it helps us establish corridors all across the country for loads in the future.”

Despite their best efforts, Scrip says the construction of new roads and overpasses will cause routes to change all the time. To ensure the proposed route will be able to handle the haul, Barnhart has a team of two survey each route before the final approval. He says this part of the planning process can take weeks to complete.

“Once we feel we have a good route, we put guys in the field to verify, making sure we can make the turns for the specific rig we’ve targeted for the haul,” Scrip said. “We send them out with height poles to measure overhead obstructions. We’ve got to make sure we can fit underneath overpasses. Or, when we encounter them, can we avoid them by ramping on and ramping off to avoid going under a low overpass? Can we detour around low overhead obstructions and then get back on our intended route? Things like that.”

For this particular haul, Scrip said the planning took around three months.

This isn’t the first time Barnhart has had an undertaking of this size. Scrip said his company has moved dozens of loads around this weight or heavier. In fact, earlier this year Barnhart moved a generator weighing in at nearly 700,000 pounds for the same Canadian company. Despite moving loads of similar weight, Scrip said the height and width made this move particularly interesting. LL