Hauling My First Oversize Load

No such thing.... you can never have too many, but you CAN have not enough

 

I'm getting a mental picture of my pilot car wife and I yelling at one another over the CB.

 

Ya sounds like me and my wife she misses me when I'm gone but loves when I leave!!

 

I tell everybody "I am home just long enough that you dont get sick of me being home"

 

My parents have been married for 38 years, but my mother says that they get along so well because my dad is a driver and if you add up the time he was actually home, they've only been married 5-6 years tops LOL

 

That's funny.

 

18' wide from Montreal, Quebec to Charleston, SC. 2 pilots the entire way with a pilot in West Virginia (22 miles, $175) plus a third pilot for a 14 mile detour in Virginia.


Now as for required equipment (lights, signs, flags etc.) I always run with way more than required. 80%+ of every load I haul is OD and probably 75%+ of them are well over 12'. With that being said, I run the exact same setup in every state and have never had a single DOT give me a second look or tell me to take something off.

I run old school halogen rotators on the top of my truck, the kind found on large self propelled cranes. In addition I have permanent flag mounts on the front corners of the truck, run a pair of flags on the rear corners of the trailer and no less than 4 flags on the load itself. I also have a pair of LED flashers that I have mounted to 60# pull magnets for the rear of the load that I can attach to the load itself if its steel otherwise I have some steel plates I bought at Home Depot that I screw to the wood then attach the lights to them.

I also have corner lights made of 1/2" diameter electrical conduit with junction boxes on the ends with red and amber LED lights that I can attach with screws and U straps to either the load or the trailer deck. I made all my wiring modular out of regular 3 way extension cords so that no matter the length or width I can make everything fit. If you look close in the above picture you can see the corner lights attached to the big box. Needed them for the 14 mile detour in Virginia otherwise I would have had to sit an additional 30 hours to pass the construction.

I have never added it all up and don't care to because it would probably scare me but over the last 24 years I'm guessing I have $4k invested in additional OD equipment.

OD is great but you have to read and re-read the regulations and permits. (Fine print on a Georgia permit requires that it be signed in blue ink to be valid) Some states still send provisions with the permits, others have them on the permit itself and still others require you to get them off the Internet and some say you have to have a printed copy yet others accept an electronic copy.

 

Do you have a step-deck? Would it be high and wide? You could take wide, but not both. If it was both, too much a PITA. After years, I would still have to search, dependent upon the destination, for the proper use of lights.

I would put that load on my step-deck.

 

How did you get a pilot for so cheap? I want a line on his pilots. Otherwise, this guy knows his stuff.