6 ms·

It doesn't happen often, but I always enjoy when I spot oversize equipment making its way across the roads. Enormous construction equipment; wind turbine blades

It doesn't happen often, but I always enjoy when I spot oversize equipment making its way across the roads. Enormous construction equipment; wind turbine blades; partial buildings. The kind of stuff that requires multiple lanes, careful route planning, and lead & follow cars. Gives a little glimpse of the immense effort we put in to building, improving, and maintaining our society.

whartung 2y ago
My wife didn’t realize it at the time, but she got to see the Space Shuttles SRBs on the freeway as they were coming into LA for the Shuttle exhibit there. Searching for when they moved Endeavor from LAX to the museum years ago is worthwhile. That was a tight fit on LA streets.
- throwup238 2y ago
  The California Science Center has a little projector room showing a timelapse of the Endeavor being delivered to its final resting spot, right before you get to the big room with the shuttle.
- CoastalCoder 2y ago
  One time when I was flying out of DC, I got to see a space shuttle on the airport tarmac. (I can't remember if it was mounted on a 747 or not.) A very cool surprise. This was probably in the 2009-2013 timeframe, IIRC.
- sib 2y ago
  A friend of mine was the official photographer for the move of the Shuttle to the museum in LA. https://www.instagram.com/p/CjtJA0PPWm3/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/CjtJA0PPWm3/?img_index=1
  - bcrosby95 2y ago
    It's actually smaller than I expected. It always appeared so much larger in the launch pictures.
    - sib 2y ago
      I agree - they've recently repositioned it vertically (as it would be launched). I was at the museum a few weeks ago and it is definitely smaller than you'd think.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      The fact it could ride piggyback on a 747 shows either how small the shuttle was or how big a 747 is. Either way, it was cool to see
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        I've seen a Space Shuttle up-close (in a museum): it's big. The 747 is just gargantuan.
    - whartung 2y ago
      The original display at the California Science Center, the one they are currently replacing, had the shuttle in a large room, and about 9-10 feet off the ground. You might have been able to touch it if you jumped up. It was a very intimate encounter with the shuttle. It's big enough to be amazing, small enough to be comprehensible in human scale. I was really quite awestruck being in its presence. (Did you know all of the heat tiles has serial numbers? In hindsight, "of course the did", they were probably all unique in their shape. But it was one of those things you discover when your nose is 4 feet away from the bottom of the craft.) That said, I can hardly wait for the new display, with the shuttle in launch form, mounted on the external tank with the SRBs. Seeing the designs they have, you'll actually still have a "close encounter" with this craft, despite its size. The rear of the shuttle will be quite close to the ground. It's going to be, I think, a very exciting exhibit.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    I wish it were feasible to occasionally take it out for a parade again. What a lovely moment that was.
adolph 2y ago
I wonder if: * there are oversized load spotters like those folks with a hobby of keeping track of aircraft or trains? * there is economic intelligence value in extracting and surfacing data from oversize load permits?
- elil17 2y ago
  I'd guess that there's not a lot of stock trading value in tracking oversize load permits. I think most publicly traded companies announce large capital investments like new factories long before trucks hit the road.
  - adolph 2y ago
    Maybe so. I'm aware of satellites used to measure oil tank utilization [0], so sometimes odd information is informative for a specific trading strategy even if it is not useful in general. 0. https://medium.com/planet-stories/a-beginners-guide-to-calculating-oil-storage-tank-occupancy-with-help-of-satellite-imagery-e8f387200178 https://medium.com/planet-stories/a-beginners-guide-to-calcu...
- Arrath 2y ago
  For the 2nd, perhaps in identifying critical routes which may be worth an extra bit of infrastructure funding for upkeep to allow such important loads to continue to transit without issue. Then again, the need for permitting should mean that state DOT's are already aware.
woodrowbarlow 2y ago
driving the follow car seems like an interesting job. they have to predict drivers and strategically position themself to redirect the herd. a diesel sheepdog.
- hansvm 2y ago
  Most jobs are probably super interesting for a month or three. Even the simplest of jobs assume you won't be productive immediately, which implies there's probably something fun to learn. I used to do a number of those odd tasks (jackhammering down bank safes in preparation for the new tenants, ordinary pizza delivery, engineering a track for people to ramp/jump their mid-90s shit-mobiles, ...). I'm in tech as an ML engineer or something now, but one of these years I think it'd be a ton of fun to sit down and intentionally experience a hundred or so jobs and get a feel for what other people do for their livelihoods -- ideally in many distinct locales (e.g., where I grew up it was common for people to rent/(buy-with-intent-to-resell) a gas-powered bandsaw mill and produce most of the raw materials for their house, partly because land was cheap, partly because wages were piss-poor, and partly because there was a strong "make-do" attitude where people were willing to work hard to make a nice life with whatever hand they were given -- the sorts of jobs you'll have access to there are very different than those even a few hours away, much less a few states or countries). That was a bit of a minor rant. I'm in strong agreement though; that sounds like a super interesting job.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Typically they have radios and so the truck asks the following driver to do something.
  - woodrowbarlow 2y ago
    like a shepherd whistling to their dogs. i imagine it's left a bit vague, like: "i need to be in that lane, please clear some room".
therouwboat 2y ago
I remember one wind turbine blade transport in small country roads in Finland, first car was basically driving on oncoming traffic side and forced me to go as close to ditch as possible, but it was good because the truck and trailer barely fit past my car.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
xattt 2y ago
Prince Edward Island is connected to the mainland with a two-lane 13.6 km bridge. There are designated times over the course of the day when the bridge is closed to traffic and oversized loads are transferred across. Several deliveries are usually staged one after the other, so you get to see a variety of loads if you are unlucky enough to have to wait for 30-40 minutes. Most of the time, it’s pre-fab buildings and nothing too exciting.
- indoordin0saur 2y ago
  Being on an island, it seems like loading it on a barge would be more efficient.
  - Damogran6 2y ago
    'loading it on a barge' doing a lot of heavy liftin there. (heh)
  - jamesfmilne 2y ago
    Does it have a harbour with sufficient cranes to offload it, and a good enough road to transport it out? And if you're going to need 4 trucks to get it out of the port anyway, might as well just drive it there. Sorry, no idea why I'm debating some random person on the internet about an issue which has absolutely no impact on me whatsoever. Sport, I guess.
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      It's a pretty big governance fail to have a single point of failure for access to an island.
      - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
        more of a cost vs benefit tradeoff than a failure. It could also be just a SPOF for over-sized loads, whereas people have multiple routes on/off island.
      - 2y ago
Loughla 2y ago
During covid shutdown a massive piece of industrial machinery was transported down our rural highway. It had like 10 lead and chase cars and a dozen state police. The actual item had 4 semis with 2 pushing and 2 pulling. I still have no idea what it was, but it added some excitement to a very mundane April that year. I have to imagine it was a very opportunistic move, since most traffic was stopped for covid already.
- CydeWeys 2y ago
  If it wasn't obviously a wind turbine blade (or a rocket!), maybe it was a petroleum distillation column? Those are a common extra-oversized highway load.
  - denimnerd42 2y ago
    accident involving one in the news recently. impatient/distracted driver crashed into the transport truck. https://www.tdtnews.com/news/business/article_c49e80c8-124b-11ef-a97c-b3055c54c221.html#:~:text=Fire%20and%20Rescue-,A%20distracted%20motorist%20ignored%20escort%20vehicles%20and%20drove%20into%20the,Texas%20Department%20of%20Transportation%20report https://www.tdtnews.com/news/business/article_c49e80c8-124b-....
    - fathyb 2y ago
      Link for Europe: https://archive.ph/IHdjm https://archive.ph/IHdjm
      - sandos 2y ago
        So, the chains broke when doing an emergency braking and the load crushed the pick-up? I clearly see that the driver was at fault, but aren't loads also not supposed to easily escape their tie-downs?
        CydeWeys 2y ago
        Some loads like this one are so heavy that you just can't defeat their inertia, hence why you go slowly and have a large escort. It couldn't be stopped that quickly just due to the nature of the load. At some point if you're getting behind the wheel of a vehicle on the road, you have some responsibility yourself. If you're not looking where you're going at all and drive into the path of a heavily-escorted million-plus-pound load and it ends up crushing you because of the sheer physics of the situation, that's on you. There's a hundred other more likely ways to kill yourself on the road if you're not looking where you're going, that don't involve such unusual cargo. And also, from looking at the photos of the scene, it looks like the driver may have turned quickly to attempt to avoid the crash, and the load continued on of its own inertia and overturned the entire rig, which is an issue caused by top-heavy torque that doesn't care how tightly the load is tied down at all.
sadhorse 2y ago
Sadly you can't get a glimpse on the immense effort we put into destroying our society. But the nunbers are available if you are curious enough.
wishfish 2y ago
For anyone interested in simulating such a drive, American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator both have DLC ("Special Transport") with trucks pulling massive payloads. Lead & follow vehicles. Plus a police escort. Mostly fun and a little frustrating. The latter due to not-always-great AI on the lead vehicles / police escorts
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
It's definitely mind-boggling to me too. I do hope Radia gets their WindRunner plane off the ground. It's designed for onshore wind renewable energy, to be a plane with colossal internal volume. But it's also designed to work on landing strips that are much shorter & crucially primitive iirc or at least much more basic, to radically expand access to where we might setup wind power. I have high confidence such a plane would most likely end up being used for other tasks too, if created. Maybe it's not as absurdly expensive as I imagine, planning & coordinating these intense logistics routes, but being able to airship things to interesting destinations seems super compelling to me, seems like it could enable a lot of infrastructure development that's simplify infeasible right now. Marching into fancifulness here, but with something as big as a fab, I could definitely picture an initial construction phase where a sizable fraction of the land is dedicated as runway to start, isn't developed, while big items are flown in. Sounds wild, but could be possible! The model Radia has is off-site construction, and it's not too too hard to imagine perhaps more than wind turbines might benefit from this model: maybe not just coolers and fabs, but perhaps even prefab building walls could benefit from this. https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-the-worlds-biggest-plane-would-supersize-wind-energy-2f116e9b https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-the-worlds-bigge... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182 Maybe it's infeasible, but I could imagine something as large as a fab being able to

whartung 2y ago

My wife didn’t realize it at the time, but she got to see the Space Shuttles SRBs on the freeway as they were coming into LA for the Shuttle exhibit there. Searching for when they moved Endeavor from LAX to the museum years ago is worthwhile. That was a tight fit on LA streets.

throwup238 2y ago
The California Science Center has a little projector room showing a timelapse of the Endeavor being delivered to its final resting spot, right before you get to the big room with the shuttle.
CoastalCoder 2y ago
One time when I was flying out of DC, I got to see a space shuttle on the airport tarmac. (I can't remember if it was mounted on a 747 or not.) A very cool surprise. This was probably in the 2009-2013 timeframe, IIRC.
sib 2y ago
A friend of mine was the official photographer for the move of the Shuttle to the museum in LA. https://www.instagram.com/p/CjtJA0PPWm3/?img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/CjtJA0PPWm3/?img_index=1
- bcrosby95 2y ago
  It's actually smaller than I expected. It always appeared so much larger in the launch pictures.
  - sib 2y ago
    I agree - they've recently repositioned it vertically (as it would be launched). I was at the museum a few weeks ago and it is definitely smaller than you'd think.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    The fact it could ride piggyback on a 747 shows either how small the shuttle was or how big a 747 is. Either way, it was cool to see
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      I've seen a Space Shuttle up-close (in a museum): it's big. The 747 is just gargantuan.
  - whartung 2y ago
    The original display at the California Science Center, the one they are currently replacing, had the shuttle in a large room, and about 9-10 feet off the ground. You might have been able to touch it if you jumped up. It was a very intimate encounter with the shuttle. It's big enough to be amazing, small enough to be comprehensible in human scale. I was really quite awestruck being in its presence. (Did you know all of the heat tiles has serial numbers? In hindsight, "of course the did", they were probably all unique in their shape. But it was one of those things you discover when your nose is 4 feet away from the bottom of the craft.) That said, I can hardly wait for the new display, with the shuttle in launch form, mounted on the external tank with the SRBs. Seeing the designs they have, you'll actually still have a "close encounter" with this craft, despite its size. The rear of the shuttle will be quite close to the ground. It's going to be, I think, a very exciting exhibit.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  I wish it were feasible to occasionally take it out for a parade again. What a lovely moment that was.

adolph 2y ago

I wonder if: * there are oversized load spotters like those folks with a hobby of keeping track of aircraft or trains? * there is economic intelligence value in extracting and surfacing data from oversize load permits?

elil17 2y ago
I'd guess that there's not a lot of stock trading value in tracking oversize load permits. I think most publicly traded companies announce large capital investments like new factories long before trucks hit the road.
- adolph 2y ago
  Maybe so. I'm aware of satellites used to measure oil tank utilization [0], so sometimes odd information is informative for a specific trading strategy even if it is not useful in general. 0. https://medium.com/planet-stories/a-beginners-guide-to-calculating-oil-storage-tank-occupancy-with-help-of-satellite-imagery-e8f387200178 https://medium.com/planet-stories/a-beginners-guide-to-calcu...
Arrath 2y ago
For the 2nd, perhaps in identifying critical routes which may be worth an extra bit of infrastructure funding for upkeep to allow such important loads to continue to transit without issue. Then again, the need for permitting should mean that state DOT's are already aware.

woodrowbarlow 2y ago

driving the follow car seems like an interesting job. they have to predict drivers and strategically position themself to redirect the herd. a diesel sheepdog.

hansvm 2y ago
Most jobs are probably super interesting for a month or three. Even the simplest of jobs assume you won't be productive immediately, which implies there's probably something fun to learn. I used to do a number of those odd tasks (jackhammering down bank safes in preparation for the new tenants, ordinary pizza delivery, engineering a track for people to ramp/jump their mid-90s shit-mobiles, ...). I'm in tech as an ML engineer or something now, but one of these years I think it'd be a ton of fun to sit down and intentionally experience a hundred or so jobs and get a feel for what other people do for their livelihoods -- ideally in many distinct locales (e.g., where I grew up it was common for people to rent/(buy-with-intent-to-resell) a gas-powered bandsaw mill and produce most of the raw materials for their house, partly because land was cheap, partly because wages were piss-poor, and partly because there was a strong "make-do" attitude where people were willing to work hard to make a nice life with whatever hand they were given -- the sorts of jobs you'll have access to there are very different than those even a few hours away, much less a few states or countries). That was a bit of a minor rant. I'm in strong agreement though; that sounds like a super interesting job.
bluGill 2y ago
Typically they have radios and so the truck asks the following driver to do something.
- woodrowbarlow 2y ago
  like a shepherd whistling to their dogs. i imagine it's left a bit vague, like: "i need to be in that lane, please clear some room".

therouwboat 2y ago

I remember one wind turbine blade transport in small country roads in Finland, first car was basically driving on oncoming traffic side and forced me to go as close to ditch as possible, but it was good because the truck and trailer barely fit past my car.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

xattt 2y ago

Prince Edward Island is connected to the mainland with a two-lane 13.6 km bridge. There are designated times over the course of the day when the bridge is closed to traffic and oversized loads are transferred across. Several deliveries are usually staged one after the other, so you get to see a variety of loads if you are unlucky enough to have to wait for 30-40 minutes. Most of the time, it’s pre-fab buildings and nothing too exciting.

indoordin0saur 2y ago
Being on an island, it seems like loading it on a barge would be more efficient.
- Damogran6 2y ago
  'loading it on a barge' doing a lot of heavy liftin there. (heh)
- jamesfmilne 2y ago
  Does it have a harbour with sufficient cranes to offload it, and a good enough road to transport it out? And if you're going to need 4 trucks to get it out of the port anyway, might as well just drive it there. Sorry, no idea why I'm debating some random person on the internet about an issue which has absolutely no impact on me whatsoever. Sport, I guess.
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    It's a pretty big governance fail to have a single point of failure for access to an island.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      more of a cost vs benefit tradeoff than a failure. It could also be just a SPOF for over-sized loads, whereas people have multiple routes on/off island.
    - 2y ago

Loughla 2y ago

During covid shutdown a massive piece of industrial machinery was transported down our rural highway. It had like 10 lead and chase cars and a dozen state police. The actual item had 4 semis with 2 pushing and 2 pulling. I still have no idea what it was, but it added some excitement to a very mundane April that year. I have to imagine it was a very opportunistic move, since most traffic was stopped for covid already.

CydeWeys 2y ago
If it wasn't obviously a wind turbine blade (or a rocket!), maybe it was a petroleum distillation column? Those are a common extra-oversized highway load.
- denimnerd42 2y ago
  accident involving one in the news recently. impatient/distracted driver crashed into the transport truck. https://www.tdtnews.com/news/business/article_c49e80c8-124b-11ef-a97c-b3055c54c221.html#:~:text=Fire%20and%20Rescue-,A%20distracted%20motorist%20ignored%20escort%20vehicles%20and%20drove%20into%20the,Texas%20Department%20of%20Transportation%20report https://www.tdtnews.com/news/business/article_c49e80c8-124b-....
  - fathyb 2y ago
    Link for Europe: https://archive.ph/IHdjm https://archive.ph/IHdjm
    - sandos 2y ago
      So, the chains broke when doing an emergency braking and the load crushed the pick-up? I clearly see that the driver was at fault, but aren't loads also not supposed to easily escape their tie-downs?
      - CydeWeys 2y ago
        Some loads like this one are so heavy that you just can't defeat their inertia, hence why you go slowly and have a large escort. It couldn't be stopped that quickly just due to the nature of the load. At some point if you're getting behind the wheel of a vehicle on the road, you have some responsibility yourself. If you're not looking where you're going at all and drive into the path of a heavily-escorted million-plus-pound load and it ends up crushing you because of the sheer physics of the situation, that's on you. There's a hundred other more likely ways to kill yourself on the road if you're not looking where you're going, that don't involve such unusual cargo. And also, from looking at the photos of the scene, it looks like the driver may have turned quickly to attempt to avoid the crash, and the load continued on of its own inertia and overturned the entire rig, which is an issue caused by top-heavy torque that doesn't care how tightly the load is tied down at all.

sadhorse 2y ago

Sadly you can't get a glimpse on the immense effort we put into destroying our society. But the nunbers are available if you are curious enough.

wishfish 2y ago

For anyone interested in simulating such a drive, American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator both have DLC ("Special Transport") with trucks pulling massive payloads. Lead & follow vehicles. Plus a police escort. Mostly fun and a little frustrating. The latter due to not-always-great AI on the lead vehicles / police escorts

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

It's definitely mind-boggling to me too. I do hope Radia gets their WindRunner plane off the ground. It's designed for onshore wind renewable energy, to be a plane with colossal internal volume. But it's also designed to work on landing strips that are much shorter & crucially primitive iirc or at least much more basic, to radically expand access to where we might setup wind power. I have high confidence such a plane would most likely end up being used for other tasks too, if created. Maybe it's not as absurdly expensive as I imagine, planning & coordinating these intense logistics routes, but being able to airship things to interesting destinations seems super compelling to me, seems like it could enable a lot of infrastructure development that's simplify infeasible right now. Marching into fancifulness here, but with something as big as a fab, I could definitely picture an initial construction phase where a sizable fraction of the land is dedicated as runway to start, isn't developed, while big items are flown in. Sounds wild, but could be possible! The model Radia has is off-site construction, and it's not too too hard to imagine perhaps more than wind turbines might benefit from this model: maybe not just coolers and fabs, but perhaps even prefab building walls could benefit from this. https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-the-worlds-biggest-plane-would-supersize-wind-energy-2f116e9b https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-the-worlds-bigge... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690182 Maybe it's infeasible, but I could imagine something as large as a fab being able to