Trucks to test roads’ capacity for large loads

MISSOULA – The state Department of Transportation is reviewing a plan for moving trailer-loads of specialized mining equipment from Idaho, through northwestern Montana and into Canada.

Starting next fall and continuing most weekdays for a year, trucks and trailers up to 165 feet long, 24 feet wide and 30 feet high will travel from Lewiston over Lolo Pass and through Missoula County to the Kearl Oil Sands Project in northern Alberta.

The Kearl fields are estimated to contain 4.6 billion barrels of bitumen, a tarlike form of petroleum, and projections are for 50 years of clearing, mining and reclamation.

Bruce Brockmann of Fluor Corp., which is engineering the transportation plan, said the trucks will move at a maximum speed of 30 mph on the flat and at 5 mph around corners and down hills.

Two-lane roads must be closed in both directions when the trucks are moving and state law doesn’t allow delays to last longer than 10 minutes.

A practice run is planned for mid-2010 using a truck configuration that represents the largest of the anticipated loads. The practice run truck is the size of a brick made up of a dozen semis – two long, two high and three wide. The largest trucks will have 12 rows of axles with eight tires per axle.