OCR Text |
Show Overweight Truck Problems Being Given to Legislature The Utah Transportation Commission will ask the Utah Legislature to fund the construction con-struction of an additional truck weigh scale station in Utah and purchase four additional portable scales. The Commission Commis-sion is attempting to combat the problem of illegally overweight over-weight trucks operating on Utah's roads. The Commission met August 13, at the Bryce Canyon Lodge. UDOT Research and Development Devel-opment Engineer Dale E. Peterson told the Commission it was possible for a truck to cross the state and avoid all permanent weigh stations (ports of entry). With only three portable scales currently operating in Utah, it is impossible to cover all of the possible routes an overweight truck might take to avoid detection. Overweight trucks damage Utah's roads and cause them to "wear out" faster than normally expected. Also, many of the overweight trucks are operating out of Utah's "energy areas" on roads that were never designed for the weight of a heavy truck. Overweight trucks are causing these roads to deteriorate rapidly. It is impossible to know how many trucks are actually overweight. Most of the vehicles that are seriously overloaded tend to operate intra-state over short haul distances. A recent UDOT check of a coal hauling operation showed that 85 of the trucks exceeded the legal load limit. The Commission will ask the Legislature for approximately $900,000 to build another permanent weigh station near Salina on 1-70 and purchase four additional portable scales. Utah would then have eleven permanent stations and seven portable scales. This would cover the state so that no overweight trucker could be sure he could travel very far in Utah without being detected. The Commission also recommended rec-ommended that a minimum fine schedule be imposed on any trucker convicted of being overweight. It was also suggested sug-gested that enforcement personnel per-sonnel force a trucker to "off-load" any excess on the spot before he was allowed to move the truck. It is felt the inconvenience of having to legalize the truck on the spot would serve as a deterrent to purposely operate an overweight over-weight vehicle. |