Thanks to Kindree for the photo and this traffic report: “The onramp to bridge from Avalon is blocked by a lumber truck. He took the corner too tight and got stuck.” The photos and note were sent half an hour ago but just came through – so we’ll be heading that way to see if this is cleared yet. (P.S. If you’re trying to recall “hasn’t this happened before?” – here’s the previous stuck truck in our archives, last October.) 11:48 AM UPDATE: Ramp clear, truck gone.
It may be some sort of optical illusion, but that looks like the longest flat-bed trailer in the entire world; I’m trying to imagine a scenario in which that much lumber would need to be transported from Harbor Ave to, well, anywhere…
Maybe there’s a sawmill at Alki that I’ve just never noticed before.
These types of odd loads come from Terminal 5, off the Westwood ships usually.
This is yet another reason why the King Count Water Taxi is so valuable! The bus that I was sitting on when this happened wasn’t going to be moving for a long time. So a bunch of us jumped on the free shuttle (Route 773) down to the water taxi and were downtown in no time.
I saw 2 of these coming up Admiral, westbound, toward California earlier this week (can’t remember the specific day). And it’s not an optical illusion, they are really long!
When Boeing does this, they use a steerable cab in the aft truck/axle (kind of like a ladder truck of the fire dept). There’s a guy sitting reclined between the rear wheels who can steer into tighter radius corners. There are a couple of surplus ones under the 1st AV Bridge, Michigan off-ramp. They need to get a couple of those!
22blades, the first time I saw one of those was probably nearly 30 years ago now.
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I’d never even heard of such a rig, and was on southbound 405 in the Kirkland/Bellvue area. I was a delivery driver at the time, and was driving a little Chevy Chevette, so was not sitting much higher than trailer guy.
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Talk about startling! Either he somehow just caught the corner of my eye, or I just glanced over casually, as drivers so often do, and it was like WTF?!? What’s that guy doing underneath that trailer?!? :lol:
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Mike
Hey Mike, you’re dating us! I was driving a Chevy LUV pickup at the time. :-) I guess “B” doesn’t make Wing Spars around here anymore…
22blade – They sure do make wing spars around here – down in Fredrickson (south of Puyallup), and they consume (put them into wings) every day up in Everett. The smaller ones for the 737 – that don’t require the extra long transporation – get delivered from Fredrickson to Renton – where they’re pumping out over 31 airplanes (62 wings, 124 spars) a month.
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