Stopped at the border

A massive piece of the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge is stranded at the Washington/Idaho state line where officials say it’s too heavy to move across Evergreen State roads.

The 73-foot-long piece, used to connect the bridge to land, tipped the scales at 330,000 pounds when it rolled through the Washington weigh station Saturday. The weigh-in includes the tonnage of the custom-built trailer carrying the structure.

The piece has been stranded at the state line ever since. Weigh station officials say the structure won’t budge unless the trucking company hired to ship the part makes it right.

“They’re going to have to figure that out,” said Nicholas Hopper, spokesman for the Washington State Patrol’s commercial vehicle division. One solution might be spreading the object’s weight out over more axles, Hopper said.

The 130,000 pound trailer already has 21 axles – in trucker speak that makes it an 84-wheeler. Mike Love, who owns Big Boat Movers, the Texas-based company charged with making the Minnesota to Tacoma haul, said adding more axles might not be practical, partly because more trailer means more weight, but also because a longer load presents traveling problems.

The trailer already stretches 149 feet. An addition to the body would push that to 200, and push the cost of the trailer to more than $100,000.

“We’re open to suggestions,” Love said. “What I’ve told them is, ‘We’ll do this any way we can. If it’s impossible then it’s real easy; y’all can build the bridge in Idaho.’ “

The movers made it through five states without being stopped, Love said, and on fewer axles. They anticipated being asked for more axles in Washington, and stopped in Idaho to boost the trailer’s count from 18 to 21. The addition increased the weight of the load by 6,000 to 16,000 pounds, depending on who’s asked.

Love said the load weighed 314,000 pounds when it left the weigh station in Montana. He thinks it weighs 320,000 now, which is 10,000 pounds lighter than portable scales at the state line weigh station reported.

The trailer might have passed muster at scales in other states, said Claudia Cornish, Tacoma Narrows Bridge media relations manager with the state Department of Transportation. In some states, the weight limits are set based on the number of axles on the trailer. A truck might be allowed 22,000 pounds per axle. Were that the case in Washington, Tacoma would have had its bridge piece Monday.

But Washington also considers where the weight is distributed. Too many axles in one area can push into the ground like a sharp stiletto heel. State regulations aim to make the trailer’s footprint much larger.

The bridge piece isn’t the heaviest load ever to enter Washington, said Jeff Carpenter, chief engineer on the Narrows Bridge project. Workers at the weigh station, however, said it was the heaviest load they could recall.

Love had to buy a transport permit for each state the bridge traveled through. Like the weight regulations, those vary greatly – from a low of $146 in Idaho to $5,000 in Washington.

The narrows project, now in its 54th month, is in no hurry for the part, which engineers described as an expansion joint used to keep the 1,500-foot-long suspension bridge grounded in the event of an earthquake or other bridge-moving event.

Another expansion joint has yet to be shipped from Minnesota.