Oversize loads and car crashes ahead.

I’ve done both. Or sometimes get lucky find a short route around it. Sometimes you’re just stuck. The wider and heavier you are the worse it gets.

 

11ft is no problem at all. If the road isn’t closed, keep going. Most states will start requiring civilian pilot cars at 12’-12’6 wide. A decent OSOW driver should be able to get a 13ft wide load anywhere that an ordinary truck can roll.

Most States/Provinces will tell you as an OSOW driver to follow any detours that were set up to get around a crash. There does come a certain point, however, when the load is so big, and required so much trip planning, that you don’t dare jump off route to take a crash detour. I have had situations where I opted to stay on the shoulder of the interstate instead

 

I think about this as local tanker yanker because I sometimes have OTR types asking about this or that or wanting to follow me around construction or wrecks. I had a pilgrim wanting to follow me on a detour around a wreck one day. He radioed and asked if I was detouring around the wreck. I came back "Yup". He says I'm going to follow you if that's cool. I radioed back to him "If you're not yanking a tank, you better stay where you are, low bridge where I'm going".

Moral of the story, you better not blindly follow the leader. What if I'd just said "ok" because I didn't think about the low bridge? There's one low bridge that I go under a couple or three times a day. That guy was just lucky that I happen to think about it. It's usually NOT something I think about.

 

Had a 100 foot crane beam, local police were routing everyone off i40 to a parallel us route in AR, had been sitting in traffic enough to look at the route, wouldnt make the sharp turns with as long as i was.

When it came to the exit, i told the officer to just let me park beyond the exit ramp and wait it out, he at first told me i had to go that way, but i pointed out i would cause a bigger problem on their detour, he looked at my load, waved me ahead, 4 hrs later the road was clear.

Sucked but at least i didnt mess anything up.

(Long is a different animal than wide)

 

Last year was headed west on a 2 lane w a north wind.
Came upon local police who had the road closed due to a raging car fire on westbound shoulder.
They were detouring vehicles onto a 5 ton gravel highway. Told him I couldn't pass by the fire w my oxidizer load and would not risk the back road at 80K.
He let me pull thru the detour and wait on the shoulder till the fire was out and the car was removed. If I sink or get stuck on a 5 ton road,even if I was directed on it guess who gets the blame..
Less then an hour delay total.

 

We had a wide aircraft body once, and interstate was closed due to fatal accident and all traffic detoured.

we just told em we were not permitted off route. They pulled the cones and let us park, by the time the road was opened four hours later , there were 8 oversize loads piled up with us.

if you have an oversize / overweight permit from the state that tells you specifically what route to use, you need to think twice about going off route. some states we have a blanket permit and can use any road we want. Some states are very specific about what roads and what times of day we are allowed on that road.

Some states we can exit and cross the interstate to a truck stop and some states we are not allowed to cross any bridge that’s not ON the permitted route.
So we have to use a truck stop thats on the same side as the exit ramp .