Anyone driving on public roads bears a lot of responsibility in watching their surroundings, and that’s doubly true of a semi-trucker. When you’re rolling deep with 80,000 pounds of combined weight for hundreds of miles every day, you are at greater risk of both encountering a dangerous situation and becoming one. The offender in question here failed to remember that and plowed into six—not one, but six—bridges with an illegally over-height load, all during a single drive.
In what was yet another bad day to be a highway overpass, the trucker hauling this enormous pipe along Oklahoma’s Interstate 44 and Will Rogers Turnpike damaged structures between Tulsa and the town of Miami. Their ill-advised heavy haul affected the following routes:
- E 530 Road – closed between S 4130 Road and Lakeway Road
- S 4220 Road – closed between E 460 Road and E 470 Road east of Claremore
- N 429 Road – closed between E 390 Road and SH-28
- N 4300 Road – closed between E 380 Road and W 390 Road
- N 4310 Road – open
- W 370 Road – open
The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority first observed damage on the S 4220 Road bridge on Tuesday. Soon after, authorities expanded the scope of their search and found five more damaged bridges within the roughly 90-mile drive. Four of the six bridges were wrecked badly enough that they need to be repaired before handling through traffic.
Judging by the OTA’s photos, there were no oversized load markings of any kind on the blue Freightliner. There apparently weren’t any pilot vehicles, either. The standard load height limit on Oklahoma turnpikes is 14 feet, according to state legislation, and anything greater than that must have a special permit issued by the Department of Transportation specifying the exact roads that will be used. I’ll go out on a limb and say that never happened here, as the OTA reports that the damaged bridges range from 14 feet and 11 inches to 15 feet and 4 inches in vertical clearance, “well above the legal limit.”
It’s unclear what type of fines will be dished out to the driver or the trucking company, but you can bet they won’t be light. States usually don’t like it when you mess up their roads, especially ones that span a highly trafficked route such as this one. I live near the Will Rogers Turnpike and take it anytime I need to go to Tulsa, but I’ll do my best to stay off it until this gets taken care of.
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