Any hazmat tanker companies hiring on the west coast?

No triples in California. I don't know why not. I-5 from the Bay to L.A. would be a natural for triples.[/QUOTE]

because when they weee proposed in the 90’s - they were determined by the general population to be killers and safety hazards and truckers couldn’t be trusted to operate them. And that was that as they say -

generally you do not find “extended” divisible freight in states where they do not produce or mine heavy resources - primarily logging, mining, agriculture, or metals. The necessary financial incentive (both from politicians and constituents) doesn’t exist on a national basis - it is a regional solution at best.

 

A single trailer is even fine, just make it a little bigger, add a drive axle to the truck, another axle to the trailer, and fill it more.
Lots of 7 axle singles around, around they gross 120k lbs

 

Sorry about the wall of text folks, but here goes.....

I'm confident that the ag groups would love to run extended doubles with a higher weight limit. Would have no problem changing over to double 35s with tandem axles. Would cut there transport costs a bunch. I am not so sure the local roads are up to it. Many are just some blacktop thrown down on compacted soil, they are very marginal now.

A bunch of Cali regs are so they know how to spec the roads, and they were enacted before some of the advancements in trucks over the years.

The 40 foot kingpin law has nothing to do with "bridge law", it is so they can do curbs of a certain radius in the urban areas and have trucks not destroy them when they turn.

They don't want to have roads and bridges torn up by heavier trucks so they limit the gross weight of on road trucks.

Another reason they limit gross is brake fires and failures that where a common thing back in the day. Dad's dad worked at one of the service stations at the bottom of Grapevine for a bit. A couple of times a week he had to grab the water truck and go cool off somebodies brakes before they started a grass fire on the side of the road. Uncle on the other side of the family was on the radio and talked a guy most of the way down Pacheco pass after he's brakes gave out. Guy lost it and died in the last sweeping corner.

The 55mph speed limit was legislated after the national speed limit was raised. I remember tuning in the news then and the lead story was typically a tally of truck accidents that killed people. Poorly maintained trucks were a thing back then also, with a bunch of them working the port in Oakland and port support (pretty sure it was the same in SoCal). The politicos did a knee jerk legislation reducing the speed limit back down, and the accidents lessened.

Over the past few decades they have implemented the biennial inspection program and actually open the more local/regional scales that have been enlarged and enhanced. I think they may have filtered out the bad behavior and are at a point they should look at raising the speed limit. Pretty sure there is no interest by the politicos to do it, and not enough positive interest in the general population to pass with a ballot initiative.

 

When I was hauling chemicals, the company I worked for started getting auto tractors.
The manual shift option on the auto transmission had been disabled on orders from who knows which desk jockey.
Didn't take a month for that decision to get reversed.