At the grocery store I work at, I occasionally have to unload deliveries off of semi-truck trailers in our receiving dock. While I was doing so the other night, I noticed this decal just inside the trailer door, which I’ve surely seen many times before but never really bothered to pay attention to;
I’m in one of the western states, where apparently this 14 foot trailer is fine - but apparently, were we to venture into Oklahoma or any of those states on the other side of that arbitary north-south line that divides the country in half as the result of some 19th century frontier line, it is imperative that this trailer NOT be loaded, because only 13’6" trailers are allowed there.
apparently it’s the height clearance under bridge on main roads, that vary between states.
Smaller in red ones.
Search “Truck height limit” and you will many info on each state’s limits. Alaska is 15 feet by the way.
My brother drove big rigs for a year or so back before ubiquitous smartphones. The hodgepodge of clearance heights was definitely a daily issue at work. There were special trucker’s editions of that most of us old farts would recognize as the
Which had detailed notes and color coding for which highways could accommodate which height (or weight) of trucks. I expect it’s an app now.
Particularly in the northeast there were lots of times you’d be driving a hundred miles out of the way due to one low bridge in one burgh along state route 123. I heard an earful about this from him from time to time.
That’s odd. I work at a grocery store as well and have been unloading trucks (by forklift) since I was 14 years old and I’ve never seen something like that.
Or is it just a bad translation? I’m thinking the intended meaning wasn’t ‘do not lot this 14ft high trailer…’, but rather 'do not load this trailer 14ft high…". IMO, that makes a whole lot more sense given the message I assume they’re trying to convey.
One of the things I’ve learned from all the truck drivers I’ve met over the years is that sometimes the height noted on the bridge may have been correct at one point, but re-paving the road without tearing out the old asphalt/concrete means the bridge might be (or more) inches closer to the ground now.
In the UK, all road bridges under 5 metres or 16’ 6" are clearly marked and there are advance warning signs. But truck drivers still hit them on a regular basis. Why? Because they either don’t know or forgot how high their truck was.
The tale about the roads having been resurfaced simply does not hold water, at least - not in this country.
It is beyond unlikely that a grocery store was receiving a delivery in an open-top trailer such that deciding to load it to 13’ 6” or 14’+ would be a possibility.
Such things do exist, but they tend to be used for stuff that is OK being exposed to the elements, like brush or mulch - not grocery store products. They also usually have wire mesh sides and doors, not solid like shown in the picture.
I would suspect that it’s a higher number of older bridges and viaducts, which predate larger, modern semis and trailers, as in the example that LSLGuy described in post #5.
My travel trailer is 12’, 7" tall at the cover for the AC unit. I have an app on my computer to check my planned routes for low clearances. My wife and I are going to the Mt. Rushmore area next month, the app showed many tunnels in that area with height restrictions.
That’s pretty much exactly it. As new bridges are built or old ones rebuilt, they raise them to the new heights. But in the east, there are so many bridges that it’s going to be decades before you can safely drive the interstates without checking first if you can go under bridges if you are over 13’6".
It wasn’t a question as to whether the height ever changes, it’s a question of whether the new height is correctly noted.
Well, in this country it does. There are spots that, if you know where to look, you can see the asphalt is nearly as high as the curb from years and years of resurfacing.
Sometimes grocery stores get deliveries from freight companies that do more than just deliver to grocery stores. My grocery store gets the occasional delivery on a flat bed truck.
Um, ok.
Skywatcher was responding to Bob_2 who said it doesn’t happen.
When they say “Do not load this 14ft high trailer if going into red states” what they mean is “If you’re going into a red state, don’t use this 14ft high trailer, it’s too tall, use a 13.5ft high trailer”.
ETA,
Not that it really matters since it’s mostly just for them, but the wording could have been a bit better.
