Courtesy Precision Heavy Haul
A giant anode is put onto a custom trailer near Salt Lake City for its trip south to Arizona. The oversize load will be passing through Las Vegas Monday.
Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011 | 1:55 a.m.
Sun coverage
Miami, Ariz.
It weighs 285 tons and moves slowly down the highway, so you don’t want to be behind it.
A giant anode, an electrode that will be used for refining copper, will be going through Southern Nevada on Monday, likely causing traffic delays, especially in Boulder City as it heads for Arizona.
It’s traveling on a custom truck and trailer rig that is 225 feet long and 20 feet wide.
If you are driving near it, please be patient and leave it plenty of room, officials ask.
The oversize load is parked north of Las Vegas, where it will wait out the weekend before passing through Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City to get to Arizona via the Hoover Dam Bypass, said Brian Berreman, a traffic coordinator for Phoenix-based Precision Heavy Haul Inc.
The load, which will have a Nevada Highway Patrol escort, moves as slowly as 15 mph uphill and takes up two lanes of highway.
It’s scheduled to cross the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge shortly after midnight Tuesday, closing the bridge in both directions.
The anode was loaded onto the truck near Salt Lake City and is scheduled to arrive Aug. 16 at the Freeport-McMoRan mine in Miami, Ariz., about 80 miles east of Phoenix. The load isn’t traveling on weekends.
Arizona Department of Transportation officials said the load will have a police escort as it slowly travels south.
It will briefly close Interstate 40 near Kingman on Tuesday morning, but otherwise the roads on the anode’s path will remain open, even if the load and motorists behind it are moving at a crawl.
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