[mchandra13]

For someone with experience in auto manufacturing and brief stint with commercial shipping(container), this is a whole new world. Thanks to Sonu, Sutripta, Jeroen, Mad Monkey and others for providing all those technical details, pictures and videos.
I have always watched these heavy duty multi-axle trucks with over-sized loads stopped near the NICE road ECity toll in Bangalore and wondered about the following questions

1. How do they cross these narrow toll booths? I have never actually witnessed such trucks crossing the toll.
2. Indian roads including all the newly built highways are full of speed breakers of different sizes and shapes. How do these trucks navigate the speed breakers, especially the ones with low bed cargo units and loads with non-uniform sizes that can impact the center of gravity
3. Most toll booths charge the multi-axle vehicles on per axle basis and I would assume it would cost a bomb to clear all those tolls along the way. For govt suppliers, is there any subsidized toll rates or exemptions that apply? Else this will go into transport costs anyways.
4. I would think any trucks with more than 10 axles will be unfit to navigate through curvy ghat sections, especially in India. However the question is, how good are they in navigating inclines along straight ways?

Any over-sized cargo transported in and out of Los Angeles ports in Long beach and San Pedro, have to pass-thru one of the mountain passes if they have to go north of LA. These mountain passes achieve an altitude of 4500 feet at their peak, before descending down to a 1000 feet level. Forget about over-sized cargoes, even regular 40 feet container semis are advised continuously to check their braking when descending and most of them stop at the top to check their brakes and use mostly engine braking while descending the incline. I have seen in LA, that most of the over-sized cargo is transported by Volvo trucks and they do go over the mountain passes with a slow but steady speed using 3 escort vehicles. Do the specs of the volvo trucks used in US compare to those used in India?

[ariesonu]

One of the major requirements of any ODC or HEAVY-LIFT cargo movement is survey of its intended route & hence it is called Route Survey.
The route survey among other things, must include turnings, low lying high voltage cables, road signboards, railway line crossings, low/high bridges and culverts etc. In short anything & everything that will impact free movement of such cargo. The most important part of this report is to advise client, if any alternate route is available or any alternate methods can be used at such junctures.
One such example is crossing of LUNI river, which falls on main ODC/HEAVY cargo route, from Radhanpur to Jaisalmer. Most northbound import cargoes, that land at Mundra or Kandla, use this route.
Now the 'ancient' bridge on this river shakes even under the wheels of Maruti 800, forget about any heavy cargo. Hence logistics companies have built an alternate parallel route on the river bed. This alternate route is so heavily used that it has become a semi-permanent fixture on the river bed, so much so that it is even captured on Google Maps. The length of this river-bed crossing is about 1.5 kms.
Here is PIC of that crossing - as taken from Google map & marked:


Such examples are aplenty in India & while doing one such culvert crossing in Assam, the team had to build an alternate temporary bridge.
Escort teams usually carry lots of empty poly bags with them & use them on bad terrain or potholes, where they fill them up with local soil & place them at such places, so that trailer can easily pass (glide) over it.
These temporary bridges are also build using same tech but with other reinforcements. The bags, labors & any equipment so used is always sourced locally but the notable point is that these temporary structures are required to be removed too, after the use.
Below is pictorial of a similar exercise done at a culvert in Assam, last year.

The cargo crossing:




The temporary bridge



Regards

[Mad Monkey]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7yLTLSXSJ8

Behind the scenes of a 800ton Heavy transport from 2003

@Jeroen i am sure you will be able to guess the origins/nationality of the gentleman narrating ....