Thursday, January 10, 2019

That's quite the load . . .


A tip o' the hat to reader N. D. for alerting me to this video and the accompanying news report.




The large pipe currently being transported is [a] piece of petrochemical developmental equipment called a splitter that weighs 820 tonnes and is 96 metres long, stated Steve Noble, senior communications adviser with Inter Pipeline.

It is currently being moved to Fort Saskatchewan from Edmonton where it will be installed at the Heartland Petrochemical Complex to produce polypropylene plastic. The equipment is approximately the length of a CFL football field. The Alberta government said it is the heaviest load in the history of Alberta’s highway network.

. . .

On Tuesday, the equipment is expected to move to Lamont from Highway 21. It is expected to complete the journey to Fort Saskatchewan on Wednesday.

The equipment will be moving below the speed limit and will make frequent stops, said an Alberta government news release. The load is the width of a two-lane highway and will occasionally travel against the flow of traffic.

The news release said the equipment is accompanied by guide vehicles and safety personnel. Vehicles travelling behind the load will face delays.

The City of Edmonton spent more than 12 months working with the provincial government planning the route as well as how weight would be distributed across the transport vehicles.

“The load included added trailers and tires to distribute the weight more evenly, which mitigates any risk of damage to the road,” Rohit Sandhu, a spokesperson for the city, stated in an email. “The potential threat to damaging the roads would have been no different than the movement of a regular truck.”

There's more at the link.

That's big, all right!  I'm glad I'm not driving in its vicinity.  I imagine it's causing a fair amount of traffic disruption as it inches along.

Peter

7 comments:

  1. That's a big pipe! I wonder how they made it...

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  2. And they decide to put it on the road when the road is covered with snow and ice. What could possibly go wrong?

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  3. My girlfriend got excited and randy watching this vid< I am so confused...

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  4. We had a number of transportation issues regarding the National Space Transportation System, aka the Shuttle.
    The launch site was of course the Kennedy Space Center on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
    The Shuttle itself was built in California and had to be transported to KSC on the back of a special purpose 747.
    The External Tanks were produced at a facility in Machoud just outside New Orleans, loaded on a special barge and towed along the intracoastal waterway from Louisiana to KSC.
    The Solid Rocket Boosters were made in Utah in sections and transported by rail to KSC on very specific routes as most train tracks lacked sufficient clearance to accommodate the oversized loads.
    Still and all nothing like the beast in this video.

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  5. On the road in the snow and ice is exactly the best time when the road is fragile and the winter is cold.

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  6. Wow! That's a BIG piece of pipe!!!

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  7. Is there room for more marker lights on those trucks?

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