overheight routings

[agentsteel53]

are there standard maps of routings for vehicles which cannot take freeways due to them carrying extra tall cargo?

I remember reading, several years back, of a ~23 foot tall item which needed to be transported west to east across Massachusetts, and MA-62 was used for the majority of the route because it had no overpasses, but I do not know if MA-62 was arrived at due to some hours/days of careful research, or if someone just looked it up in a reference manual.

if such a manual existed, it would be very cool to see.  I for one would love to know how one gets a 23 foot tall item from Provincetown to Long Beach.

[burneraccount]

Here are some truckers maps from Michigan's DOT:

http://michigan.gov/mdot/0,4616,7-151-9622_11033_32060-98220--,00.html

[jeffandnicole]

Here's the 'truckers' portion of the Rand McNally website: http://www.randmcnally.com/trucking/index.jsp

[djsinco]

Oversize permit requirements vary from state to state. The permit issued by the state will dictate the route, in the case of a very tall or otherwise exceptional haul. The old Rand McNally laminated truckers atlas used to include a woefully out-of-date and non-comprehensive list of low underpasses in each state. I would assume that the new truck-specific GPS units include this in their routing software. In any event, with a very tall load, it is not up to the driver to decide a route.

[cpzilliacus]

Oversize permit requirements vary from state to state. The permit issued by the state will dictate the route, in the case of a very tall or otherwise exceptional haul. The old Rand McNally laminated truckers atlas used to include a woefully out-of-date and non-comprehensive list of low underpasses in each state. I would assume that the new truck-specific GPS units include this in their routing software. In any event, with a very tall load, it is not up to the driver to decide a route.

The single worst major highway I know of with height restrictions is I-95 in North Carolina, which has several of them between Lumberton and I-40.

[Alps]

PennDOT publishes one, which is the only truck map I have in my possession. I think when you have a particularly oversized vehicle, you are supposed to coordinate with the state DOT rather than risk it yourself.

[cpzilliacus]

PennDOT publishes one, which is the only truck map I have in my possession. I think when you have a particularly oversized vehicle, you are supposed to coordinate with the state DOT rather than risk it yourself.

Maryland has one, which can  be downloaded from the SHA Web site at these URLs.

Front:  http://apps.roads.maryland.gov/shaservices/mapsbrochures/maps/oppe/trucker_front.pdf   (huge file, 57 MB (!), and if you download it, it takes a while to render)

Back: http://www.marylandroads.com/OPPEN/Trucker_Back.pdf (only 11.4 MB, also takes a while to render)

[hbelkins]

I think when you have a particularly oversized vehicle, you are supposed to coordinate with the state DOT rather than risk it yourself.

Yes.

[Duke87]

Back when I worked for the City of Stamford, I was semi-involved in a process of moving several pieces of portable school classroom from one site to another. The sections were about 75 feet long, and when on the bed of a trailer about 16-18 feet high. The route was carefully planned out in advance both for clearance and for turning radii... we also scouted the route out in person before the move. We had to, and we had to make some adjustments and accommodations based on what we found.

See, here's the thing you have to keep in mind: when you have an overheight vehicle, overpasses are only one concern, and they are the easiest one to address since their heights are usually known and logged. But you also have to worry about things like traffic signals, overhead wires, tree branches... which you have to scout out the planned route ahead of time in order to properly handle. As part of the operation I described above, a traffic signal head had to be temporarily removed at one intersection in order to allow the trucks to pass.