After delivering the fire truck to the Air Force base this morning I went into St Louis to pick up another load. Just about the time I arrived I got a call telling me that load had cancelled. Oh well. Sometimes that happens. I made my way to the truckstop (one with WiFI of course) and awaited a call for another load.
I got the call this afternoon, the place was only 15 miles from me. Cool! I trucked on over there to see what they had for me. It was an 80ft boom lift. My first question was "Ummm, exactly how much does that sucker weigh?" 38,000lbs was the response.
As long as the boom was, even collapsed, the thing would have to be set at one extreme end of the trailer or the other with the boom resting on the opposite end. That just wasn't going to work as it would concentrate far too much weight on either the trailer axles or the drive axles depending on which way it was situated. No way to get the weight even close to evenly distributed.
As DOT regulations only allow a maximum of 34,000lbs on any set of tandem axles, this was a real problem. Had I been pulling a spread axle trailer it could have worked as the 6ft spread between the tandems allows one to legally carry extra weight on them. But no such luck here. I called my office and informed them of the situation, telling them there was no way to scale it out correctly and asked what they wanted me to do. (I already knew the answer).
"If we can't scale it out, we can't haul it. They aren't paying "permit rates."" That was all I needed to hear. I told the man I was sorry but there was no way I could haul it for him and that he should make a point of telling the broker to request a spread axle trailer for it.
Now I am back at the same truckstop, for the night, awaiting the call some time tomorrow that will send me on my merry way once again.