Professional truck drivers can tell you that adding extra weight to tractor trailers can make them more difficult to control and more likely to roll over. It makes them harder to stop and steer and increases speed differentials, which will lead to more collisions. And when a heavier truck is involved in a crash with an automobile, it is more likely that the occupants of the car will be seriously injured or killed.
Why, then, is our state Department of Transportation asking the Legislature to allow substantially heavier single- and double-trailer trucks? Under the guise of a "study", MnDOT has been aggressively marketing a plan to allow single-tractor trailers to weigh up to 97,000 pounds and double trailers up to 108,000 pounds. The current legal limit on state roads and on the interstates is 80,000.
State troopers, the AAA, and even the state trucking association want no part of this. They say it is too dangerous and would tear up roads and bridges at a time when the state is already woefully short on needed road maintenance and repair funds.
It is time for the media in Minnesota to start asking MnDOT some hardball questions about this harebrained idea. It is not the truck drivers and the trucking companies that want this. The big shippers want this program. They don't care about our roads, just more profit on the part of the shippers.
Charles Nelson
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Willmar
