Eastern Railroad Discussion > Manville, NJ ex-LV overpass got whacked by a truck - again

https://patch.com/new-jersey/bridgewater/s/h2at4/video-walmart-truck-ripped-open-crashes-manville-underpass

Western Express driver. With a move like that, I was expecting Swift!

Always know the height of your rig. How hard is this?

TJY

OMG!! Hope there wasn't toilet paper!!!
 

"The trailer containing general Walmart products was completely destroyed. There was no damage to the tractor itself,"

Was there any toilet paper in that load?

Brian

Facing away from the store, I hope it had just unloaded.
I am telecommuting for the forseeable future, but I normally drive through there at 7am. The scratches on the yellow paint were from a prior strike. The sacrificial girder is rather new, been struck 3 or 4 times now. The prior one took a really bad whack about 2 years ago by a container truck and bent it out of shape. 

icancmp193 Wrote:
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> Always know the height of your rig. How hard is
> this?
>
> TJY

It’s not that hard. I drove for a moving co in college the first thing the dispatcher said was to think vertically. Trailer is 13’6 they mean it For me the marked bridges such as this were easy it was the errant old oak tree on the side streets where moving vans frequent was more difficult. Think vertically.

Posted from iPhone

There is a steep slope to get under it, so there is some trigonometry to deal with as well. A simple clearance figure is not adequate.

Posted from Android

joemvcnj Wrote:
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> There is a steep slope to get under it, so there
> is some trigonometry to deal with as well. A
> simple clearance figure is not adequate.
>
> Posted from Android

if they post a clearance of say, 11' 6", it will be 11' 6", steep grade or not. As a driver is approaching the bridge the driver has no time to do any math before he drives under it. 

What I am saying is the clearance amount should take into account a 60' trailer, and use it to reduce the actual vertical distance to the realistic clearance. No, I don't expect a truck driver to calculate the Pythagorean solution in an instant in his head.

If the truck had just pulled out of Walmart by the police station, it bypassed the lit clearance warning light that it would have triggered along Main Street. There is also a huge volume of auto loader trucks from a huge lot behind Walmart. They never seem to fall victim to this bridge.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/20 11:48 by joemvcnj.

choodude Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "The trailer containing general Walmart products
> was completely destroyed. There was no damage to
> the tractor itself,"
>
> Was there any toilet paper in that load?
>
> Brian

Ha I was thinking the same..... :)

There's a much more sophisticated over size truck device on Wood Avenue in Linden NJ. Right where the road ducks under the Northeast Corridor.  But, it doesn't have the deep dive that Manville enjoys.

Height sensing radar, flashing lights, a whoop-whoop horn, etc. But it still gets hit every few weeks.