Went into Milwaukee this morning to load. Let me tell you, it was not easy to get into this place!! It was the first time any of us had loaded this thing so there was a lot of guessing as to how it would go on the truck. What it is, is a huge 50,000 pound ring gear for a Caterpillar 7495 Rope Shovel. It is the thing that the machine sits on and enables it to rotate. Just to give you an idea of the size of it, here is a photo of the machine.
First had to put the rack on the trailer and secure it. Then "fly" the ring over to it.
Here it is all loaded up and secured for transport. It took four attempts to get it right.
Left there and had one heck of a time getting on the road. The first intersection was an elbow turn to the right. There were stop light poles on the corners and a median. The piled up snow was solid ice. Had to go up on the median and into the ice pile to make the turn. When the bumper hit the ice it bent the bumper into my tire. Once I made it around the turn I pulled over to the side of the road, attached a chain to a tree and to my bumper, and backed up to pull the bumper off the tire. Wisconsin had me routed through the city streets for a long time before getting back to the Interstate highway. It took what seemed like forever!! Wisconsin does not require an escort for this load (I'm 14 feet wide) but the rest of the states I will be going through do. This thing is going to the Port of Brunswick, Georgia. I met up with my escort before I got to Illinois.
Continued on uneventfully, thank goodness, and stopped for the night at a truck stop in Auburn, Illinois.
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