CHP officer warns tight county roads pose rollover risk; supervisors ask staff to explore truck-route and weight restrictions

A California Highway Patrol commercial vehicle enforcement officer told the Amador County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 25 that narrow lanes and tight curves on some local roads make them unsuitable for long commercial combinations and have contributed to recent rollovers.

Officer Brian Morse, assigned to the Valley Division Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit, described on-the-road measurements and recent incidents on Climax Road and Upper Ridge Road. He said lanes on Climax are about 9 to 10 feet wide, compared with 12-foot lanes on major highways, and that a combination truck and trailer up to 65 feet long and up to 80,000 pounds is currently allowed on some of those local roads.

“Climax Road is so tight that when a truck overturns it can block the entire roadway and require multiple CHP personnel and county crews for hours to right the load and clear the road,” Morse said, describing two recent rollovers that closed the route for about four hours each.

Nut graf: The technical issue the officer emphasized was ‘off-tracking’ — the rear wheels of a long trailer deviating inward on tight curves — and the challenge of heavy through traffic on two-lane rural roads that also carry school buses and local residents. Supervisors asked staff to investigate administrative steps to designate or restrict certain county roads as non-truck routes or to impose weight limits.

Details and context: Morse timed and recorded steering inputs and travel times on Climax Road and Ridge Road and contrasted them with state routes 88 and 49. He said Climax’s curves required 32 steering inputs on a 3-mile stretch and noted two overturned combinations carrying hay and mulch in recent months. Morse said a weight restriction of 80,000 pounds is a statewide limit; Ridge Road had posted signs restricting certain upper segments to 10 tons (20,000 pounds).

Public comments and board direction: Residents raised concerns about contractor qualifications and project oversight for hazard-tree removal on Forest Service projects, and asked that county staff audit contracts and payroll. Several supervisors suggested the county weigh tradeoffs between maintaining through access for local businesses and protecting roads from heavy, nonlocal truck traffic. The board directed staff to research the legal and procedural steps to designate truck routes, implement weight limits or post advisory signage, and to review what similar rural counties have done.

Ending: The board asked staff to return with options and comparable examples from other counties; no ordinance or permanent restriction was adopted at the meeting.