I saw this over at Timewaster's Open Road Friday and it occurred to me to wonder, was the whole idea of the New England covered bridge simply a blind force test to keep the weight crossing the bridge under control? You know, not to exceed? You can see why this might occur to me if you've ever been to Pakistan.
In Pakistan and some other places with unusual truck loading philosophies they don't actually believe it is possible to overload a truck. Which also calls to mind the mental image formed when one country attempted to fly its gold reserves out of the country before the Revolution and the runway was littered with gold bars all along the way to the end where they fell through the floor of the grossly overloaded plane because the loaders all felt that there was, "still plenty of room, let's put in some more."
4 comments:
In a sense you are right, but it was more to reduce the snow load on the bridges. Before winter snow was plowed off of roads in New England, it was "rolled" or basically just packed down. Pre-automobile times. That way horse-drawn sleighs could be used. But of course that meant it didn't melt off as easily in between snow storms.
Packing many feet of snow onto a bridge added too much weight. Especially over an entire winter.
Google "horse drawn snow roller" for photos.
Thank you! I wondered, why there and nowhere else.
I have seen a few Jingle trucks that had broken frames due to overloading.
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