A truck carrying a too-high load once again hit the tops of the cross beams on the Columbia River Bridge in Coulee Dam Monday night, the second time in probably 10 years that’s happened.

The incident highlights recent calls for a new bridge. Although structurally it’s sound, the bridge classified as “structurally obsolete.” Modern road builders want roads that are at least 40 feet wide. The roadway on the bridge is 20 feet wide.

That specification is not a luxury; times have changed. Trucks are not larger versions of the narrow cars I imagine once pulled into our tiny garage in west Coulee Dam. They are large, built for today’s roads. The bridge in Coulee Dam is not.

I used to drive across it four times a day in a truck that was eight-and-a-half feet wide, 14 feet, 4 inches tall and 75 feet long, weighing 105,000 pounds fully loaded. The run was from the company facility in Spokane Valley to one of two lumber mills operating in Omak to haul wood shavings, used for particleboard, Pres-to-Logs, or other products.

It was a big, wide rig, and it scared oncoming drivers less confident than I that we would both fit in passing on the narrow bridge. That was in the 80s, and the span was obsolete even then.

The truck that held up traffic Monday was carrying heavy equipment that stuck up too far. The bridge only has a height clearance of 14 feet, 5 inches.

There were plenty of times that my loads barely cleared it, but it was easy to gauge against the actual box of the truck. The equipment hauler had no such gauge, so his load dinged across three quarters of the bridge before he finally stopped.

His misfortune soon bled over into our community when fire trucks on the way to fires near Nespelem had to get permission to cross the dam instead of the plugged-up bridge.

Making do with what is obsolete comes with hidden costs.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher