Every industry has its share of challenging issues and demands. While many of these are faced and overcome from behind desks and in front of computer screens, many other industry challanges are confronted in the field. The highway bridge construction, maintenance, and inspection industry – a significant segment of the nation’s broader infrastructure industries – […]
The United States is home to over 618,400 highway bridges, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) 2022 Bridge Report. Along with regular cleaning, maintenance, and repair – in addition to periodic rehabilitation – these publicly owned bridges must be inspected routinely. How often highway bridge inspections occur, however, hinges on several […]
The United States is certainly not the oldest nation in the world and there are few structures still standing here that are more than 400 years old, which is incredibly recent by European standards and those of other parts of the globe. A bridge in Greece, for example, is purported to be the oldest bridge […]
As noted in a previous article, the United States boasts a network of railways that carry almost 30 percent of U.S. freight movement by ton-miles, which is the length and weight of freight travel. These privately owned tracks add up to about 140,000 route miles and are found in every state except for Hawaii. In […]
Bridges, like people, require maintenance as they get older. And the United States has plenty of aging highway bridges. According to the most recent Infrastructure Report Card published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), there are more than 617,000 bridges across the United States. However, more than 42 percent of those bridges are […]
The trucking industry has estimated that close to 12 billion tons of freight were moved by truck over America’s highways. And according to the American Trucking Association, trucks move roughly 72.5 percent of the nation’s freight by weight. And all those trucks regularly traversed many of the almost 620,000 highway bridges across the nation. But […]
Bridge deck inspections are a significant component for many DOTs or the firms they employ for that purpose. And there are over 610,000 highway bridges in the United States, and most of these bridges’ construction, repair, rehabilitation, and inspections are funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Responsibility for the regular inspection of these highway […]
Asking what it is about Snooper™ trucks that make them so ideal for bridge inspections might seem like a trick question to veteran bridge inspectors. For many DOTs, engineering firms, and highway contractors, a Snooper™ truck is the epitome of the ultimate bridge inspection vehicle. In fact, the legendary Snooper™ has become almost synonymous with […]
Routine bridge inspections are often anything but “routine.” For most people, engineers included, there is nothing routine about being suspended 175 feet above a green, valley floor. And this in a metal basket attached to the end of a thin, steel boom that’s been lowered from the relative safety of a bridge deck! When you’re […]
The venerable Snooper™ truck has been around for almost five decades now, the very first model being sold back in 1964. And they have been associated with bridge inspection and repair from the start. As we noted in an earlier article, the original equipment was designed to “inspect, repair, sandblast, paint” underneath bridge decks. And […]
