It's 250 feet long, 16-feet-wide and 14 feet tall. And it will be inching its way along an interstate near you on Wednesday and Thursday.
Monster Mega-Load Part 2 may sound like the next installment of the Transformers franchise. But it's actually the second of two traffic disruptions caused this week by the hauling of a large machine press through metro Atlanta. This time, the load is nearly twice as heavy as the 385,000-pound machine press that traveled along Interstates 20 and 75 on Monday night.
Credit: Andria Brooks
Credit: Andria Brooks
Georgia Department of Transportation is warning motorists that a 638,000-pound machine press will travel through metro Atlanta starting at 8 p.m. Thursday evening. It is en route from Columbia County (near Augusta) to White, Ga., about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta in Bartow County.
The vehicle and its oversized haul will take up two lanes of traffic and would be too tall to clear some bridges and utility poles and wires in the state. Thus, special care has gone into selecting a route, planning to travel at night and having two Georgia State Patrol vehicle escorts.
The mega load will also feature moving message boards warning of traffic interruptions at key bridges and intersections. Metro-Atlanta traffic will slow or even stop at some points due to the excessive size of the load, GDOT warned.
The final destination is voestalpine Automotive Body Parts Inc. on Voestalpine Drive in Bartow County.
"This is part of the equipment we are bringing in for a new process to be done in the U.S.," said company president Philipp Schulz. "We are hot-forming steel so it is triple-strength. It’s an innovation that we need to make your cars lighter and still have corrosion protection. The mega load is part of that equipment."
Follow the mega load! (Better yet, don't): At 7 p.m. Wednesday, the mega load will travel westbound from Columbia County on the Georgia Coast to Newton County on I-20. The mega load will temporarily suspend travel overnight in Newton County. It will resume travel at 8 p.m., continuing on I-20 westbound through DeKalb County and then north on I-75 northbound through Fulton and Cobb counties en route to Bartow County.
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