Kentucky Stops Issuing New Permits for Heavy Coal Trucks

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

entucky state transportation officials stopped issuing permits Monday that allow coal trucks with extra axles to exceed state weight limits on highways in Eastern Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported Tuesday.

The decision was after highway officials met with Kentucky Vehicle Enforcement officers, the paper reported.

It will remove an exemption that state attorneys said should never have been issued, Doug Hogan, a spokesman for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, told the Herald-Leader. Fewer than 30 permits will be affected, he said.

Large coal trucks normally have two or three axles near the tailgate on 38-foot beds. Adding an axle allowed them to haul 20,000 pounds more than the existing weight limit for each new axle.

The provision was included as a committee substitute in Kentucky's 1986 law that already allowed coal trucks to haul 46,000 pounds above the 80,000-pound federal weight limit for heavy-duty trucks, the paper said.

Kentucky Vehicle Enforcement Commissioner Greg Howard, whose agency began serious enforcement of coal-truck weight laws in 2004 for the first time in at least eight years, said he was pleased with the decision, the Herald-Leader reported.

Last March, the state defeated a measure to extend extra-weight limits to trucks other than coal carriers.

(Click here for previous coverage.)