[Vision2020] Megaload incident in Montana

Fri Sep 2 15:44:50 PDT 2011

I've been on that road at place.  It's hard to believe that oversized loads except for farm machinery going from field to field are allowed there.

w.

From: Ellen Roskovich 
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 12:49 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
Subject: [Vision2020] Megaload incident in Montana

... this is an eye opening article about the danger of oversizedloads, and the denial games the companies involved in the shipmentscan play.   ---------- Forwarded message ----------  http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_a11cb2e2-d44b-11e0-b6d4-001cc4c002e0.html Motor home has close call with oversize load on Highway 200   Eldon Dreyer knew what was coming. He just didn't think it was coming so fast. Dreyer was driving his motor home west last week down a rollingstretch of Highway 200 east of Ovando, with his wife Shari and theirthree dogs as passengers. From the other direction a pilot truck came, amber lights flashing anda hand waving a red flag out the driver's window. He thought he gotthe message. "OK, I know there's a big load coming," Dreyer, 75, said a day later. He figures the next truck, flashing and warning the same way, wasabout 500 yards behind. "These guys were driving 50 or 60 miles an hour, going like a bat outof hell," Dreyer said. He slowed to 40 mph just before the highway entered the east approachto Sperry Grade, where it climbs a small finger ridge and bends backdown to the Blackfoot River bottom. "By that time I'm into the curve, guardrails on both sides of me.Nobody told me to stop. And here that sucker comes," he said. Ryash Transport Inc. of Leduc, Alberta, was transporting one ofseveral loads of steel formations from Washington to Alberta for KruppCanada of Calgary. A Ryash semitractor was towing a 115,000-pound,14-foot-high load, with what Dreyer described as "a big metal piecethat jutted out." The jut spread above the highway 23 feet, 8 inches, according to thetrip permit provided by the Montana Department of Transportation.Dreyer later paced it off and estimated the highway at that point at32 feet wide, guardrail to guardrail. His motor home, counting largesideview mirrors, is about 9 feet wide. "I got over as far as I could, and of course I didn't want to tear mymotor home up on the guardrail either," said Dreyer, who's fromRiverside, Calif. "And he caught us." The Ryash load clipped the driver's side mirror off. The large mirrorsmashed into the side window, breaking an outer pane of glass but notthe inner. Shards cracked the windshield of a trailing ChevroletSuburban and left what its driver, J.C. Ellender of Choteau, describedas "a big pineapple." Remarkably, no one was hurt. "We were blessed," Dreyer said. "Twelve inches more and he would havetotally wiped out my motor home. He probably would have wiped out me." The motor home and Suburban quickly found a wide spot to pull over and breathe. Dreyer said he considered unhitching the car he'd been towing andgiving chase to the big rig. "But I decided, what would that prove?And at about that time I looked up the road and here came flashinglights." *** A woman driving the trailing escort truck for Ryash had witnessed theincident. She came back to take stock, and was later joined by theunidentified driver of the big rig and another pilot vehicle driverwho'd apparently stopped at the closest pulloff point. They gave the Dreyers and Ellender contact information for RyashTransport and waited for the Montana Highway Patrol to show up. Ellender had a doctor's appointment in Missoula and didn't stickaround. He said his windshield had been cracked anyway, so he plannedon replacing it on his own dime. Dreyer said a Montana Highway Patrol trooper eventually did show up toinvestigate. The upshot, he said, was that the big rig driver didn'treceive a ticket. Ryash's permit with the transportation department restricted its speedto 55 mph, and didn't call for traffic stoppages. "The problem is, by the time you see it, you don't have enough time toreact at 55," Dreyer said. "At 35 you have time to put on your brakes,pull way over, do something" Ellender called Ryash Transport in Canada and spoke with owner MichaelHutchings. "His reaction was that the motor home was entirely in the wrong, that(Dreyer) had blown through three escort vehicles and that was what puthim in harm's way," said Ellender. "But the escort vehicles, in myestimation, were doing a little less than exemplary job, just being infront of him with blinking lights and traveling probably 60 or 70miles an hour." Contacted on Wednesday at his headquarters in Leduc, near Edmonton,Hutchings said he didn't have the police report, but didn't think hisdriver was to blame. "As far as we know, it's no fault of ours," he said. According to the MDT permit, the load entered Montana from Idaho onInterstate 90 at Lookout Pass. It left the interstate at St. Regis,presumably to avoid construction projects in Mineral County, andtraveled on Highways 35 and 200 to Ravalli, Highway 93 back to I-90west of Missoula, and jumped back on 200 at Bonner. Asked why his company didn't haul the loads on I-90 and then I-15 atButte, as many of Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil's more famous megaloads ofoil sands processing equipment are now doing, Hutchings replied,"You'll have to talk to (the Department of Transportation). Theydecide the final routing, we don't. It's got to do with theirconstruction zones." *** Duane Williams, who heads MDT's Motor Carrier Services, said thetransport companies pick the route they want to go on when they submitan application for a 32-J (oversized load) permit. "If there's construction, or if we know of any obstacles, we work withthem on that," he said. Williams said the permit restricted the speed of the Ryash load to 55mph, and didn't call for night-time travel or stoppages of oncomingtraffic. Hutchings guessed that the load the Dreyers encountered was one ofhalf a dozen that Ryash has already transported through Montana on theproject. "I don't know what we've got left down there. Three or four, maybe," he said. Lori Ryan of the Montana Department of Transportation said three Ryashloads were due to leave the chain-up area near Mullan, Idaho, at 6p.m. MDT on Wednesday. Construction at the top of Lookout Pass on theMontana side requires a pilot-car escort of oversized vehiclesstarting at 6:30 a.m. Permits are good for five days once they're issued. If there were nocomplications, Ryash could have reached Alberta by Wednesday night. The Dreyers were traveling to visit relatives in Missoula from Minot,N.D., where they volunteered to help clean up after devastating floodsearlier in the summer. They plan to stay for another week or so inMissoula, but Eldon Dreyer said he's encountered a problem. It's going to take four weeks to receive a new sideview mirror for hismotor home from the factory. He said Wednesday he was trying to figureout how to jury-rig a mirror on so he and Shari can drive home toCalifornia. "I sure think it would be a good idea to let people know this is goingon," Dreyer said. "If you see somebody leaning out a window waving aflag, be very careful. You'd better get off the road and stop, by allmeans." Copyright 2011 missoulian.com. All rights reserved. Posted in Local on Thursday, September 1, 2011 6:15 am Updated: 7:54am. | Tags: Oversized Loads, Montana Department Of Transportation,Highway 200, Ovando, Sperry Grade, Ryash Transport Inc., Motor Home,Megaloads Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_a11cb2e2-d44b-11e0-b6d4-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1WlL1XTsF 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

=======================================================
 List services made available by First Step Internet,
 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
               http://www.fsr.net
          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20110902/86245599/attachment.html>