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ATA now supports longer and/or heavier trucks

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal NS2317 - I'm curious. Why do you think that intersections will need to be rebuilt? Are you still of the mindset that you'd see double 53' combos driving on city streets? Did you miss the point I made that the likelyhood is such LCV's would be restricted to Interstate highways and other compatitble roads? What will happen is that trailers will be delivered to the roadhead singly, then combined at the head of the Interstate. When the destination is approached, the consist will be broken up back to single trailers for the final leg of the journey. And there would be no need to build all new TOFC equipment, since most spine cars are spec'd for 53' and some are spec'd for 57'. Trucking companies will just use 5th wheel dollies to connect the trailing trailer. An example of the savings by these new proposals will be the ability of trucks to pull two 20' containers (or a 40'/20' ; 40'/40' combo) using the b-train configuration, whereas now we are limited to one container per truck. It should be noted that both the 20/20 and 20/40 combos would still fit into the current length standard. [/quote] Futuremodal, So, which is it. Longer trailers with more weight or doubling up existing trailers that are high cube and can hold more weight? The article does mention doubles but it seems to me that the ATA is legislating longer trailers with more weight capacity. Regardless of the two, most of these longer trucks will still end up OTR and have to exit the highway to fuel, rest ect. With trucks stopping to double up don't you create a choke point, such as what the railroad calls a classifiaction yard? If trucks are using the highway, chances are they might as well just keep on trucking to the destination rather than hand the freight off to the railroad, anyway. Also keep in mind that your idea of handing off to the railroad will most likely take place in a cramped city area where space is rather scarce on roads that were designed for use by smaller delivery trucks at best. The same goes for delivery of these trailers to the destination. From experience, I would not reli***he idea of adding even more weight or length to a commercial vehicle. Even more so if the thing was double articulated! This legislation may look good on paper, but in practice sounds like a very bad idea, regardless of whatever illusionary economical benefits there might be, period.
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