Which truck signs do I need to worry about?
Sometimes I think I should pay attention to the truck signs and other times, I'm not sure. How do you handle these signs? No Thru Trucks No Trucks Left Lane or Trucks Right Two Lanes Only No Tru...
Forum Discussion
It is useful to follow truck routes and pay attention to "No Trucks Over ..." going into or through towns because there may be clearance or weight limit issues. Often these restrictions are for safety or noise control, but sometimes there are real physical limits. There are still a lot of rail underpasses along the routes of 1930s-built highways where a 12-16 foot wide roadway goes under a structure with 8 to 12 feet of clearance. There are even more narrow bridges with 6 to 10 ton weight limits, and a few that have gone down to as low as 4 tons before the bridge and route were finally closed.
Another thing I've encountered off highways, getting into through streets in urban areas, is low tree limbs. If the street is a bus route, limbs might be trimmed to bus height, but a lot of our RVs are taller than modern low-floor transit buses, or even school buses and sanitation trucks that regularly use those roads. My city has a "trim anything lower than 12 feet" rule, but limbs might droop over the roadway to 8-10 feet near the curb before anybody gets a citation, and branches start growing back into this space as soon as they are trimmed.
Case by case, you need to figure out whether the rule is about regulation of commercial traffic, is it about managing safety of large vehicles in the traffic mix, or is it about physical limitations.
There are not enough RVs on the road to make it worthwhile to change signs to read "Trucks, Busses, RVs and other large vehicles" which is what is sometimes intended by "Trucks." And there are other times when the "Trucks" prohibition includes privately owned pickups and vans, as on some of the boulevards in Chicago and its northern suburbs.
Another thing I've encountered off highways, getting into through streets in urban areas, is low tree limbs. If the street is a bus route, limbs might be trimmed to bus height, but a lot of our RVs are taller than modern low-floor transit buses, or even school buses and sanitation trucks that regularly use those roads. My city has a "trim anything lower than 12 feet" rule, but limbs might droop over the roadway to 8-10 feet near the curb before anybody gets a citation, and branches start growing back into this space as soon as they are trimmed.
Case by case, you need to figure out whether the rule is about regulation of commercial traffic, is it about managing safety of large vehicles in the traffic mix, or is it about physical limitations.
There are not enough RVs on the road to make it worthwhile to change signs to read "Trucks, Busses, RVs and other large vehicles" which is what is sometimes intended by "Trucks." And there are other times when the "Trucks" prohibition includes privately owned pickups and vans, as on some of the boulevards in Chicago and its northern suburbs.
