Overweight trucks bill advances in Indiana statehouse

This was on local news.

Feb 18, 2021 Existing state law authorizes trucks hauling metal commodities to be permitted up to 120,000 pounds. Additionally, loads of bark, logs, sawdust, wood chips, or agricultural commodities are permitted up to 97,000 pounds for transport from the point of harvest to the point of first destination

IS this anything new? Do other states have the same law?

I don't think it has changed since I retired 10 years ago but Michigan use to be up to 164,000 gross with eleven axels. Probably why our roads are in such bad conditions.

lots of states have overloaded truck laws, a good per-centage have you buy a permit. My state (NE) has a harvest unpermitted overload of 15% on tandem axles on truck or trailer but not trailer spread axles. you have to buy a permit to run interstate with a legally loaded triple axle (over 80,000). I know Idaho does some of the things with ag commodities. What i'm trying to say, is it not something new. I'm also not saying it's good or bad for indiana! Sometimes these laws are temporary laws.

Indiana has a law allowing trucks hauling tomatoes to be allowed to be overloaded, not sure what the weight is. I am allowed 10% over hauling grain out of the field. The cops and DOT leave farmers alone in this area.

That's all we need.

Dean

NY says if you pay the money and go through the effort to get the permit your semi truck can handle in excess of 100000#.

Every state is different with certain loads getting special treatment because lobbying factions convinced ($$) rule makers into allowing special treatment.

And those rules are just for everyday legal weights.

Special permits allow just about any weight.

We routinely shipped furnaces weighing over 200,000lbs.

Truck weigh laws vary from state to state . Way back while many of you were just pups 73280 was the max gross in some states , here in Ohio it was 80000 , Mich. was 13000 per axle up to 13 axles , Va was 76000 Al. was 120000 on state roads , then ya jumped the big creek and inter bridge came into play and in my case with my truck it cut me back to 68and change . Most trucks were legal with around 44000 net . Today trucks are heavier .When the DEREGULATION went into affect it was a nightmare because yes now you could run 80000 on the interstate system BUT once you got off states were still sticking to the old weights and you were now over . Back in the day i pulled a coal bucket and each and every day i was over , we hauled coal out of strip mines right out of the cut . No scales till ya got to the power plants or mills . Some loads were plum ugly depending on what size loader they were loading with . If they were loading with a 4-6 Yd loader then ya could get a nice even load , then ya went some place they were loading with a 992 Cat or a 400 Hough or a big A C and bam one in the nose and one in the back and ya had coal running off all four corners and stacked three feet high above the boards along with a 1/4 trailer full of water because you were in a foot and a half of water loading. and you had close to fifty if not over that tons on. You would drag it up out of the pit and pull over into and area where we would go get up on the load and shovel OFF what was going to fall off and knock the camel humps down and go . You had a rough idea how much you had by what gear you pulled the hills with. Most loads were referred to as BELL ringers and that was anything over 124000 lbs as that was as high the scales at the power plants could weigh and then you had to split weigh . Once you pulled on the scales and the bell or horn went off ment you had to back the trailer off the scales and they would weight the tractor then you pulled the trailer on and only weighed the trailer .

Tennessee allows Ag and Wood products from point of harvest to delivery 88,000.

No special load limits to my knowledge. Oversize and overweight permits are calculated on axle number and steer axle tire width.

Biggest violator I've ever heard of was about 20-25 yrs back a way big load was stopped by a trooper on I44 East of Tulsa. He called for the portable scales. Load was so heavy the truck couldn't get it on the scales. He was parked for days before they could figure out how to weigh and move it. Total was over 500,000lbs! I don't know what it was, but what looked like a huge piece of oil refinery gear. They had no permit of course, just trying to slip by.

Yup and Double R you and I know very well those gravel trains run closer to 200,000 when nobody is looking along with the super trains hauling grain during fall harvest.

In Wash. state, I am GCWed at 88,000 on a 3 axle tractor and 48' triple axle trailer. In Wash. they really watch bridge loading. I usually haul about 57,000, or a little over. Coming out of B.C. you see drivers that have sliding axles, stopping and moving their axles back, so that the meet Wash. requirements.

IN New York the state issues R permits, and as long as the axle weights meet the standards you can haul up to 120,000 lbs.
Many years ago when they implemented this i had to go thru the design of all our county bridges and had weaker bridges posted for safe load limits

Indiana is the same, but most believe 88,000 is minimum. ( I must confess I have crossed the scales with corn at 100,000)

(quoted from post at 11:17:50 05/12/21) NY says if you pay the money and go through the effort to get the permit your semi truck can handle in excess of 100000#.

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One of my pet peeves! When I was working as a NYSP DOT Insp one of my duties was police for overweight trucks. I made the mistake of thinking on my own and realizing that we were told trucks were only "safe" up to a certain weight. After that death and destruction of our roadways was certain to follow...UNLESS the trucker paid the State a certain amount of $$$ and then the truck was suddenly safe again!!! After that I didn't get super excited about the guy that a bit over. Yeah, the guy running down the road in a 5 axle rig at 137K was obviously going to get some attention, but it wasn't something I was going to froth at the mouth over.

One of the other things that I found mind boggling was the people that would gripe about the Amish leaving marks on the road with their steel wheeled vehicles and shod horses that were often the same people hauling liquid manure with a combination that would have scaled well over 100K that never gave a thought to the culverts they crushed, to say nothing of what the articulated tractors were doing as they turned on the pavement.

Earlier this spring Iowa was still in harvest overload mode. In other words a rear double axle tractor and double trailer could weigh 90,000 and stay off the interstate. The guy I had hauling has triple rear on the tractor and triple on the trailer, scale tickets were always around 1,300 bushels of corn, the trailer was full. He said he wasn't legal but wasn't worried.

I hauled in 672 bu of high test weight wheat on a tandem Chevrolet grossing about 58,600#. Took a trailer load of corn in, 1342.5 bu., grossed a little over 113,000#.

Only 500,000?
Michigan has written tickets for being 250,000 over the 500,000 the permits were good for.

Unless it's changed again, you are supposed to carry a paper listing where it's coming from, and where it's going, and you are only allowed 70 miles from the field.
They determined it was too cheap to cover the state's cost to write the permits, and so few were getting them, that no one would if they increased the price.
Wasn't long after I moved out here they did it. About 2012, maybe.