Come rainy season, come mud

I do not know if anybody caught a recent news posting of a truck arrested in or near Ganta the other day. It, or rather its occupants, were accused of trying to smuggle rice to Guinea. All in all this was a straightforward story, but what hit me as amazing was the fact that the truck had a load of 700 bags of rice or roughly about USD 20000 worth.

So what, you would say. Well here is the issue.

That is 35 metric tonnes of rice plus the weight of the truck, say another 5 to 8 tonnes. Now, mind you, I have not seen the truck, but that is a hell of a lot of weight coming down on each tire. Put this on a newly grated, renovated gravel road, and those tires will make pretty deep ruts/tracks especially if there is moisture in the road. Very quickly, with the next rain, water will set in those tracks, causing the road to quickly start to muddle up, especially if more and similar loads pass the same way.

When trucks are manufactured, the producer always has to give the maximum payload for that particular vehicle. In most countries, this is also regulated by the maximum amount of tire/axel pressure that is generally allowed in traffic. Generally speaking, a 35 tonne load should have at least 5 or 6 axels of four tires. But in some places, even this is not enough for that kind of weight. The most common truck here usually has 3 axels to distribute the weight.

What I am getting at is that we need to start, if not already availiable, in the interest of our infrastructure, making viable traffic regulations and enforcing these rigourously. In cases like these, the truck owner is usually risking the longevity of his vehicle but that is not the point.

The point is that every rainy season, truckdrivers with grossly overloaded trucks damage our already thinstretched infrastructure. It must be frustrating for anyone repairing the road, and even more so for the general public using the road. I am not even going to get going about what this overloading does to the already worn bridges along the way.

So, this is a challenge to those responsible for maintaining our roads. Find a way to curb these ignorant practices by profit hungry demolishers.

The road you save may be your own.