Tipp City - The Tank that Wouldn't Go
In all our travels, we only had one write up in a paper. In Tipp City, Ohio, we shut down their Main Street all day long. The state had permitted us through the town, but our load, a CMI asphalt tank on trailer dollies (pictured above), didn't want to go the same way the permit did. Actually, we only had 6 inches of ground clearance, and being 120 feet long, the tank wanted to high center on a set of railroad tracks. But, the police were real nice, they found us an alternate street to by pass the tracks, this seemed to be the perfect solution at 7:00 in the morning. We made the detour, got through the main part of downtown and was heading east out of town, when we encountered a huge hump in the road. Not your typical sloping street, but a drop off, about five feet worth. It reminded me of the streets in San Francisco. Anyway, we couldn't make it, it was raining, so laying boards down and ramping it was out of the question, besides we would have had to build up 14 inches, not a safe thing to do with this kind of load. Then some one had the bright idea to get a boom truck out and to lift the rear axle and swing it and lift it over the hump. Bo made a phone call to CMI, to ask if this was a feasible step to take. The answer was NO! Apparently, the tank has coils inside to keep the asphalt warm, and lifting the tank could crack or tweak the coils. We sat on the side of Main Street, (15' wide) of Tipp City all day long, (with a local policeman waving traffic around the tank, there was only room for one lane of traffic either way), waiting for someone to make a decision. And that is how we made headlines, Troy, north of Tipp City, sent out a reporter to cover the story. I got the information from her, and sent off for a copy of the paper. Well, to finish with this story, Bo took our high pole escort, we were 15'7" high, and they went looking for a different route and found one that would get us to I-70 east bound. But the state of Ohio refused to issue a new permit for the new route. The bickering between the state and our company went on all day long. Finally, the big boss of our company asked Bo if he felt comfortable with this new route, Bo told him he knew he could get the tank through on this route. So, he told him to get out there and do it, and to call him just as soon as he made it to the interstate and that he would take personal responsibility if we got stopped for being off route without a permit. So we did, Bo backed that tank downtown main street for 5 blocks before we could find a wide enough side street to turn up on, the police had the entire 5 blocks blocked off so we could do this, but we made it without anything happening this was about 7:00 in the evening, a full 12 hours of fighting the state of Ohio over a stupid route. But, we got some great experience in dealing with state permit offices, something to avoid if you can.