Is There A Difference Here?

. In Onterrible we used to get 61,800 on the 6’ and 9’ spread lift axle trailers as long as you weren’t too close to the truck with the lift. The 12’ tridems they only give us 57,200. That 6’+9’ configuration was pretty much an ON/MI thing and we lost the weight advantage of the 6’+9’ in a regulation change a few years ago. My experience in MI, same as Onterrible, is you pretty much have to have a truck/trailer combo measured for spacings at the scale to find out exactly what you can put on it. I would suggest talking to both MI and OH first, and make a decision from there.

 

Before the rule changes our problems started with the shorter trailers. 9’ from the tandem you get 20,000 on the lift, unless you’re too close to the truck, then you start losing weight off the lift again. 45’ with a short pin setting you could max out the lift. All it took was a deep pin or a 42’ trailer and we were down to 18,000 on the lift. As I said, all that changed here since I had trucks doing the ON/MI thing. I don’t know what’s happened over there. I’d still call both MI/OH and find out what will work, or the best compromise. A mis-spec’d trailer can lose you a lot of potential revenue over its lifetime if you guess wrong.

 

Oh man then for sure you want to get it right. Hauling stuff rated by the ton or hundredweight is where you really suffer from a couple hundred or a thousand pounds a load for years. Doing the research on what combination of spec and permit combination allows you to max out is worth thousands of dollars a year to you. Can’t leave those nickels and dimes laying around. They add up too.

 

Thought they might have something in place but I wasn’t sure. The automotive industry pushed that. ON and MI aligned their weight rules and configurations somewhat to make it easier. The counties around Detroit where your only maximums are engineering maximums on structures on your route was automotive related too obviously. I knew back in the day the steel trucks used to go down to the forging plants and #### in Toledo heavy. Just wasn’t sure how they were doing it. You found it.

 

A couple of years ago the IL end was a problem for Canadian trains. They were good for weight but not length in IL I guess, they were supposed to split. Jean-Guy Tabarnac and the boys from Montreal were going in and out of there hooked up and had IL DOT wiggin’ out. Again that’s a few years ago and may have changed since with the issues they were having.