Bigger trucks anyone?

The exception in Oregon for length would be triples at 105 ft and nonreducable loads like gluelams/poles @ 120ft from my experience.

 

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Have seen bunches of B-trains (5th wheel attached to a 3 axle lead trailer) in WA and Oregon. I see a bunch from Sherman Brothers out of Oregon running around. What I typically see on them is bladders of chemicals heading north and heavy loads of processed timber headed south.

We get a bunch of stuff flowing down from BC on Bs
Grain and potato haulers in the eastern side of the state out into Idaho doing field to processing plant hauls use Bs
Bs are also popular with the folks that haul containers of compressed hay into the shipping ports.

You are correct about the A-train being more common, but there are Bs out here in niche markets.

Hows about a video for the pics or it didn't happen crowd:

 

My old boss had some of these hopper flat B trains in the 90’s and into the mid 2000’s or so.


Plenty of B trains running around out west. Quite a few Canadians still pull B train hoppers down, Americans used to but many have gone to the Rtac sets to increase their bridge in the states.

 

That’s why I said doubles were limited to 68ft of trailer.

 

Sherman Bros used to bring resin to the particle board plant in Missoula in those bladders. They were pretty neat.

 

Ran an A train for Sherman as a gypo.

 

Don't forget about a power outage, that happens all the time here. I'm reminded of a story of an autonomous truck being tested on a back road in Florida. All was going well until suddenly, the truck lost power and cruised to a stop. The creator never thought of a power outage at the "command center".

 

Sadly as we have seen over and over and over and over and over again ad nauseam. Some corpo critter who has likely never had his ### in a seat is going to get a presentation. He is going to love the idea. And they are going to push it with us being the guinea pigs. If the convoy wrecks it will 100% be on that driver and the next iteration will have measures for exactly that situation. Wont help the driver or company that went up in flames over it. But who cares, corpo critters will just pull the handle on the golden parachute and be to a new company in a week.

While i laugh at anyone who thinks these things will replace every human in short order. Your going to start seeing it in the next few years and in the next decade or two it will be common. That said i said its more likely then the nonsense in that video for a reason. Someone else already covered the logisitics side of things.

But we will see what happens. I just cant see these autotrucks replaceing humans entirely. I can see them replaceing humans for LTL and such though. Can also see the drone approach for final mile as well. Truck gets itself to where it needs to be. Operator takes over and backs it in and moves to the next rig.

Its why im not worried. Even if these things are common there are to many jobs that will require a human even if just for liability.