On Tuesday, a 23-foot tall, 20-foot wide, 280-foot long trailer that weighs 916,000 pounds reached its final destination at the New Albany construction site, home to the future Intel facility.
This “extra-large superload” is an air processor known as a cold box, and is used in the silicon chip manufacturing process.
These superloads are transported to Ohio via barge on the Ohio River, and picked up at a port east of Manchester in Adams County. Previous shipments have only taken a few days to travel from Adams County to Licking County, but due to the size and weight constraints, this one took 10 days, starting on June 16. The load generally travels slower than 10 miles per hour.
Matt Bruning, spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Transportation, talked about the years worth of preparation that goes into a journey like this.
“It’s a lot of planning,” Bruning said. “Our Office of Special Hauling certainly does a lot of planning to look at the routes, analyze the routes and make sure the bridges and roads can handle the weight and there’s plenty of vertical clearance.”
Special care has to be taken to ensure there are no overpasses on the route and that traffic signals can be moved. ODOT also looks into local festivals, fairs and school events, in an effort to not disrupt traffic on busy days for a community.
This superload is the 12th of roughly two dozen needed for the Intel facility, and the first of four extra-large superloads. Bruning said that ODOT aimed to schedule deliveries strategically after the July 4 holiday to minimize impact on local communities, particularly schools.
Throughout the 10-day journey, the cold box attracted considerable public interest. Residents along the route came out daily to witness and document the passage of this extraordinary load.
“This is a big moment for Ohio's economy,” Bruning said. “To see these things going into a facility that's going to pump a lot of money into our economy and create a lot of jobs. But I think, also, people were just excited to see something you don't see every day. So I think that was a driver of why you saw so many people come out along the route each day.”
