Height of telephone cables etc above the road

Height of telephone cables etc above the road

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Discussion

ChemicalChaos

Original Poster:

10,524 posts

167 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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Hi all,

So next weekend I'm moving a quite tall (3.75m) load by trailer behind my car, to display it at a show. I'm going from Skelmersdale to Nantwich and then on to Newark on Trent, all on A roads apart from access at either end.
I last moved it on the exact same route few years ago, and back then I had a low-deck car trailer at 450mm so I was under the height of a normal truck in total.

This year my new trailer is 600mm on the deck. This now puts me at 4.35m or thereabouts, and into twitchy bum territory.
I know that motorway and trunk road bridges are a minimum of 5m, so that's fine.
However on a drive along part of my route today (the A49 from Nantwich to the M56) I noticed that a lot of telephone (or LV power?) cables seemed to hang alarmingly low across the road with loads of droop. Is this the case or was my perspective all screwed up? Obviously they clear a normal truck which is 4.2m (am I right?), One would assume they must also clear something like a double deck supermarket trailer or chaos would result, but I've never actually seen one one that route to compare.

Am I worrying unduly? Is it worth investing in a lorry satnav app for peace of mind?

All thoughts appreciated!

ingenieur

4,216 posts

188 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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From a casual browse of the internet it seems the minimum heights are more than 5 meters. So at your height you should be well within the limit. It looks like double-decker busses are 4.4m.

normalbloke

7,712 posts

226 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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italianjob1275

572 posts

153 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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Anything under 16ft 6inches needs a sign on it.

r3g

3,750 posts

31 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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Double decker trailers at 16'4 go up and down the A49 every weeknight so I doubt you'll have any issues assuming you've measured it correctly sat on the trailer with it hitched up to the prime mover.

Matt_E_Mulsion

1,713 posts

72 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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italianjob1275 said:
Anything under 16ft 6inches needs a sign on it.
This. But...

It's not always the fixed objects you've got to be mindful of, for example trees can grow over the carriageway and they will only be as high as the biggest vehicle that regularly travels that route.

Smint

1,984 posts

42 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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Ask any car transporter driver what's the most dangerous of damage causing possibilities, and they'll say trees, none of which are measured nor signed.

Trees have got worse, twigs are neither here not there, but a solid branch will very quickly ruin whatever is high and your day.
Regularly driven A roads shouldn't be an issue up to 15ft, but above that and you can have problems, lesser used A roads such as the A25 which runs parallel to the M25 southern section you'll be hitting branches at 14'/6".

Those double deck trailers you see take a serious pounding off trees.
At one time the nationalised bus companies would keep a roofless double decker and go round regularly trimming the tress off, since deregulation there's no money for that so it's high vehicles which do the job instead,

Edited by Smint on Sunday 19th June 19:54