This happened today in my area where they are currently widening I-65 from 2 to 4 lanes, north and south in Central AL. For the record - none of these are my pics. The rig that hit it looks like a Volvo 235 on a lowboy with a rock box loaded on. Not 100% sure if both were on the trailer at the same time. Knocked the **** out of it. This exit is where county road 87 crosses over 65. Also the exit off 65 for several distribution centers and our local Cat dealer. We did a 50K SF warehouse expansion in the same business park off this exit several years ago. Don't see the bridge opening back up anytime soon. ALDOT put out a press release that they are trying to open up the southbound lane of 65 sometime tonight. It's going to a mess in the area for a while. Hope I don't need any Cat parts anytime soon.
That thing looks like it skid some distance after it left the trailer I bet it was pretty epic to watch
I wonder if the car in the ditch had a front row seat when it happened??
Dude, I've never seen a standard boom 200 class excavator that can't fold up enough on a lowboy to clear interstate bridges. He had to have that rock box on the rear of the trailer preventing being able to tuck the boom/stick in properly. Just damn driver!
I would bet the rock box was the straw that broke the cammels back in this scenario probably held the boom from going all the way down
I was wondering the same thing, I know most excavators (excluding the ones with unusual booms ratio) can easily fold to or very close to the cab's roof height. And @bam1968 regarding that car sitting sideway in the grass, after zooming in I would say it really had a very close-up view for sure, as the windshield for sure looks like its all cracked up and theres even some visible roof cresting as well. THAT driver really needs a total change of clothings for sure!
I believe so. There were some serious injuries. Screen shots from the video below. Video from a local news outlet -
The rig that hit the bridge is one of the contractors working on the widening. Only assuming they were moving equipment up and down the project.
Guess they will need a change order for a bridge rebuild
If that was a contractor working on the widening, then that driver was doing hammer down moving equipment. That smack was at top speed and he felt it.
Very similar to the Bullfrog overpass I-90 around a year ago. It was repaired very fast. *
Yeah that happens in this state it seems the truck insurance gets off free. Why not tax payer's are rich here. No excuse for that happening in any state. That should be the last truck that the driver ever drives in this country.
Wow! The top cylinder is broken and it bent the boom!
The rig and excavator belong to one of the contractors working on the widening. At this point I don't know if they were moving that excavator and rock box down the project or it was coming from another job. Same contractor is doing another widening project in the area so it could have came from there. Either way it looks like he was hauling ass.
Yeah. I don't think that bridge was designated to be replaced but it probably will now. This project is roughly $110M and is broke up in 3 phases with 3 different GC's. This contractor was apparently working for all 3 doing grade, drain and base. The legal fall out is going to get messy to say the least.
It will be a mess for whoever gets picked to be the insurance adjuster. Does the company carry enough liability insurance to cover the repairs of the bridge? How about damages to any of the incidental victims? Is the victims insurance going to cover their losses if the truck owners can't? Did the company have insurance on the truck and excavator enough to cover those damages? I've worked on a couple of cases where there wasn't enough coverage and the state ends up with the bridge bill and the victims end up holding the bag.
If I had a nickel for every time somebody hit a bridge in Kansas with an excavator loaded forward and punched through the bridge deck, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened twice. Outside of Hays on I-70: Last year in Osage County on US-75
It seems like it’s mostly excavators. Machines that can be lowered to legal height but aren’t. Guys pulling a lowbed that shouldn’t.
John this is how the rig in this accident is broken down - Hauling company - lowboy and truck Rental company - excavator Contractor - hiring both Here's the kicker - all separate companies however all owned by the same person. Now the wild card is who owns the rock box?
Looks like the Cat kept all it's cylinders.. Why on God's creation called Earth would ANYONE haul an excavator with the boom facing forward? Even to the rear **** happens like this I-65 crash but damn I don't even haul mini's with the boom forward.
Wasn't an excavator but I saw an article yesterday about a oversize load that didn't quite fit under an overpass. The interesting part about that episode was that the trucker had got permits and his load was below the height limit on his permit.......
@Northern mb I'll be very surprised if that particular bridge was not one of these several cases of erroneous signages that seem to show up at times.. (says the opposite story I have noticed elsewhere where someone sent a 13ft6in truck into a 12ft10in signed bridge and easily cleared it no problem..uhh..)
Why for sure! You load an excavator on a lowboy, meaning, that truck and trailer are off road, either a gravel lot or construction site, and your dumb azz has it cab forward. That's a good way to crack that laminated front windshield from a stone from the tires of the truck when it hits highway speed.
Terrible crash but, where did they get the cleanup operators from Home Depot? I mean what a dog and pony show. That could have been cleaned up in minutes.
@oarwhat hmm, regarding that - every time I see a major semi-disintegrated tractor in middle of highway on television show, after the then-hooked tractor has been moved to the shoulder any immediate hands including tow drivers themselves always seem to willingly take to any shovels or brooms they had handy to get at least one lane 'urgently' cleared for the police to let limited traffic through. This being both Highway Thru Hell and Heavy Rescue 401 episodes. And at least once it was a rolled lumber truck leaving a lot of loose planks in all lanes, guess who was nearby and happy to help out reopening one lane through the mess? A highway plow truck, talk about pushing wood out of the way instead of typical snow/slush!
The clean up crew was already there working on the expansion and also work for the same company as the rig that hit the bridge. I imagine there was a lot of shock and CYA going on.
Yep we all know how "real" reality TV shows are. We have a Gold Rush thread somewhere in the basement here on HEF that's comical.
@CM1995 well to be honest these are real tow jobs, same can be said of a certain Ron Pratt on youtube as well. Even then I have watched a bit of misc types of A&E shows before and these ones seem to be scripted "life" aka fictional.
Wow! Those pics show how weak those structures are, pretty crazy. Maybe old excavator sticks and booms should be incorporated into those over passes for added strength.
You can buy a one owner excavator at Ritchie Brothers this fall.
I live in hays, that ex hitting the bridge was wild, a car was about to go over the bridge at the same time when it hit. The truck was around 100' past it, probably needs a new seat. Driver was off route, he was on a highway bypass and was supposed to go over the interstate and take a right after the interstate, go a two miles (parallel to the interstate) to the highway, and head north on the highway. He was confused or lost and thought that he would go two miles down i70 and then head north on the highway. There was a reason i70 was not on his route.
The amount of outright idiot steering wheel holders I see hauling equipment is getting shocking One of the contract haulers completely took out a bridge using a big Peterson grinder…hauling it out of our main branch. We hire these morons too. And it’s not just really expensive dumb stuff like whacking bridges it’s a whole host of other stupidity. We had one drive a skid steer off the back of a beavertail without lowering the ramp then two weeks later he turned a scissor lift over The other week I watched one spend 3 straight hours trying to load a boom lift. He couldn’t figure it out. The era of the experienced professional driver is over.
The era of experienced professional mechanic is too.
The fault of that is purely the companies who employ them.
We had one low bed operator, forgot to chain a Mustang skid steer down. He had a Bomag roller and a small Leeboy grader and the Mustang. He was on the phone while he was doing it and somehow, just forgot. They were missing that Mustang for 2 weeks. It was coming from a Grind, Grade, Compact job, on some rich guys driveway, that was on a really big hill, with some good sized switch backs. The owner of the driveway called 2 weeks later and asked when they were coming to pick up the Mustang, rolled over, off one of the switch backs. Duh!
Yup. Of course and it's driven mostly by us, the folks who hire out the lowest bidding trucking company to haul our stuff. Those companies can only afford to hire the lowest cost driver and you know what that means... Just saying that the haul bidding system is geared to employ the lowest cost driver to keep costs down so we need to find ways to avoid those pitfalls. For me, I have my short list of local owner-operators that I've used before and trust. I don't even ask for bids anymore, I just go straight to them and offer a job and happily pay for a good haul. Ain't worth the time or frustration to save a benjy or two on a critical load. Yeah, I know I'm small and I can get away with that but hopefully everyone has their shortlist too.
There is much more to it than just companies willing to hire with low standards.
This isn't specific to this thread, but as they often say with "save a penny, spend a dollar" as sometimes when you try to save too much you end up spending a lot more instead!
Hauling company’s new slogan is going to be, We have a bridge to sell!
Uhhhh hm I'm somehow not too surprised anymore after having seen way too many of these clips from the rather famous 11-then-12something high rail overpass channel on youtube. Even raising the rail bridge clearance a few inches still has not cured some "blind wheel holder" drivers! I think one of my non-truck favourite ones on the aforementioned channel tho would be that fifth wheel camper trailer which almost was ok except it bashed off its mid-roof a/c pod, I'm not so sure if such a roof hole can be economically repaired on these cheap thing but umm yeah..
While there is no certified data showing amount of bridge/overpass strikes yearly, it is considered 10 to possibly 15 percent of collisions involving trucks are bridge/ overpass by FMCSA.
Some are lazy blindly following car gps. Suggest to drivers & rv'ers to use a trucker gps can enter height, weight & length but because looking at it takes em long way won't use it. One time stuck out fuel delivering that over pass backing up traffic.
Any route restrictions can be found by entering {highway number & state}, height is sole responsibility of transport company/driver. * I will have a truck to tow back from Lebanon Ore coming up in a few weeks. I plan on using Hyw 20 between Lebanon & Redmond. I've known for years Santiam Pass has length restrictions, easy to look up. No trailers over 40', Doubles allowed 60' long from front of front trailer to back of rear trailer, maximum length tractor with single trailer 60'. My total length will be 58.5' * McKenzie Pass hyw 126 just south is 35' max for any vehicle including RSH's. Strictly enforced, the road through lava beds is extremely narrow and zero shoulder. * All is easily found on any PC/phone.
@Deere500a in many such cases it seem drivers really blindly don't even look out the windshield one bit. In fact I know that a few reactions to how their car ended up on tram-only tracks were exactly "I was just following what the GPS told me" to the non-repulsed police officers, but if you used one bit of actual eyesight you would easily see the 'no automobiles!' signs AND the fact that many times the paved surface ends right at such signs too (I only said 'many' because there are some places where tram-only sections still are fully paved over right up to the height of railheads for some reason, but nevertheless the many others are clearly visible high rails) I leave you with an example photo of such GPS-blind cars here https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/25B6/production/_86245690_tram_car_5_blur.jpg Anyhow this doesn't have anything to do with machineries tho so I won't comment any further..
Gotta love the optimism I guess. "I hit the bridge at speed but all I need to do is give it a little throttle and I'll be on my way again. I've already moved the conduit out of the way so I'm good ..." I would guess that most trades guys moving a mini never look at a bridge clearance sign and would have no idea what their height is if they did ...
I like how he got out of the truck and threw his hands up like it's not his fault and he's pissed off at something. Gotta be a sparky.
What an idiot but 9' 7" is really low clearance.
Looks like there is a 12'5" bypass on the other side.
I know not what I do, but do it anyway because no one told me not to, therefore I'm not at fault. Will use that excuse their entire life when it fits the situation.
This is a somewhat local railroad overpass that is almost a weekly event. Nicknamed "The Ripper"
Is that a regular road? That's really low clearance.
@Welder Dave it may be relative, especially related to what kind of local traffics there is and if the route had an equally-easy alternative around it for large or non-local traffics. Especially towns that have old rail bridges originally built when there were just a few vehicles daily and by now its too costly to shut down any road&rail traffics to in particular widen the embanks and then repave a new road altogether hence modern traffic have to live with the very long 2-lane country road becoming a onelane-yield affair in this one single spot on the map.
YT1300 pretty much nailed it. It is also in a low area. So lowering the road is pretty much out of the question. Almost weekly a U-haul type truck tries to make it under it.
I'd guess it's a short cut and a little off the beaten path.
If you get off the interstate in any northeastern US city you'll find a railroad or other overpass that is well under 13-6. I've seen them as low as 6' tall in the center of a single lane arch. When driving truck I regularly pulled vans and reefers under an overpass that measured 13-8 at the centerline of a one way, two lane street and 10-8 at the outer edges of either lane. If you didn't straddle the centerline you'd hit the bridge. It happened several times a month... These are old cities built when rail was the only form of land transport that mattered.
This is nuts. I don't do any hauling but I get nervous driving my backhoe down the road looking at low overhead wires, even though I know garbage trucks and buses can make it. When I took my RV trip a few years back I literally drove every inch of my travel, ahead of time, on Google street view, to see if there was anything I'd need to worry about in a taller-than-I'm-used-to vehicle. I'd be terrified to hit an overpass.
Much more troubling is having to use public toilets, having a wreck is real low on the list.
Height of the hoe @ 12' & cable/phone along sidewalk requirements of 12'+/ roof overhang good habit keep in mind how tall machine is running around.
A few years ago, we bought a class A RV. Got it home tried everything out in the driveway. We took it for ride one day. Carefully backed out and started down the street. We hear this huge bang. Thought maybe a cabinet door slammed . While checking it out , a neighbor says you dropped something. Ripped the crank up TV antenna right off! Doesn't end there. I put a big sign by the ignition to lower the antenna , etc. I'm in a big hurry next time and rip out the telephone wires to my house . A few kids were watching me as I threw the wires in the street and took off. These kids tell there moms, and the moms call the police and the police call the power company. I guess there was quite a ruckus.
oarwhat you don't happen to drive a Mack do you?
Not anymore. Used to.
Whoops! Sounds like me ripping the cable line out of the ground to my house and my neighbors several times with the backhoe, then I had it strung up over the route I use to get from the front to back yard with the backhoe and I ripped it out then too. It's since been buried appropriately.
We were putting an addition on the house. I was hauling the fill out on my driveway with a backhoe. I had to lower the boom to miss the telephone wires. Hauled probably 80 loads to get it down to grade, with no problem. Next morning I took out the line first run.
Years ago one of my co-workers dug under a low lean-to roof with a back hoe all day. It was just tall enough to clear the back hoe cab and exhaust stack. He was pretty proud of himself for digging all day without putting a scratch on the ceiling... Then, when he was finished, muscle memory took over. He raised the outriggers all the way, curled the bucket, tucked in the dipper, and raised the boom to the transport position while swivelling the seat forward. Punched a hole through the ceiling and into the roof...
Which brings around--Just how many shops ended up with skylights after dump truck mishaps?
Different kind of place for this and everything, but lets just say theres one military tank that was somehow assumed to be 'out of drive' except it was not and the little throttle test on the engine from inside the loud and semi-blind cabin rather resulted in the building itself having an "unofficial" new big hole in it!
My Mack dump truck driver snagged an overhead powerline in a new subdivision we were wokking in. Pulling out of the driveway (mud) looking at the excavator operator for guidance. The excavator excavator operator was watching the gravel outfall and not looking overhead. Electric co showed up in 15 minutes and set a new pole (snapped the old one) and fixed the lines. I never got a bill from the power co. Changed insurance the next year and the the new co asked for a claim print out. There it was $6K, charged to my insurance.
Well drove over the bridge that was hit yesterday and today gathering some coolant additives from the Cat house. West bound lane is closed off however east bound lane is open which works well if one is going south to the Cat house and then back north.