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Nov 13, 2023

Pratt Paper's massive boiler makes a slow move down Henderson roads

HENDERSON, Ky. − One of the most anticipated and meticulously planned truck

HENDERSON, Ky. − One of the most anticipated and meticulously planned truck movements over Henderson County highways — the delivery of a 220,000-pound boiler component to the Pratt Paper construction site south of town — went off flawlessly and in a fraction of the predicted time Tuesday morning.

That could hardly have been expected shortly after daybreak that day, when a dense fog shrouded Henderson, and uncertainty over just how the transport would proceed lingered among onlookers.

The official expectation was that the oversized, overweight load would creep along closed highways at about one mile per hour, taking three hours to travel from the dock of the Henderson County Riverport (where it had arrived last weekend by barge from Texas) to the Pratt site some three miles away.

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The load — essentially, a big silver box nearly as wide as a two-lane highway, loaded onto a 10-axle, 40-wheel trailer pulled by a 600-horsepower semi-tractor rig — was going to necessitate closing sections of Kentucky 136-West and the Kentucky 425/South Bypass to other traffic over a couple of hours.

Nearby industries expecting their own truck deliveries that morning were alerted. Three utility companies were put on notice that a 21-foot-tall load would be traveling beneath their overhead lines. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet summoned bucket trucks to temporarily raise the traffic lights at the U.S. 60-West intersection beside Henderson Community College. Henderson Police and sheriff's deputies were on hand, ready to stop traffic.

But just as the rising sun quickly burned through the fog to produce a flawless autumn day, Phillip Hodskins — the man from Sterett Heavy Hauling of Owensboro who would be driving the big rig pulling the big load — lightened any tensions with his cheerful confidence.

"Believe it or not, this is small for me," Hodskins remarked beforehand to Henderson City Manager Buzzy Newman, who helped organize local agencies for the move. A giant press he once delivered to an aluminum rolling mill weighed three times more than the boiler evaporator he would be hauling for Pratt, the driver said.

A short time later, Hodskins addressed a small brigade of representatives from a host of organizations that had been assembled to assist with the task: power companies Kenergy Corp. and Kentucky Utilities, AT&T, Henderson Police, the state Highway Department, Henderson Economic Development, Henderson County Emergency Management and others, many of them attired in hardhats and safety-green vests.

"We’re going to try and make this slow and easy," Hodskins told them reassuringly. "The utility lines are going to be the biggest issue. We’re going to go nice and slow. We’re not in a hurry. We’ve got all day to do this." The move was to begin at 9 a.m.

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A few dozen people on hand settled in for a long morning.

They needn't have.

At about 9:10 a.m., the big load could be seen moving along Riverport Road, and not as slowly as expected. Police who had blocked the entrance to the riverport with their vehicles quickly reshuffled to block Kentucky 136-West; onlookers from local agencies and news media hustled to get ahead of the convoy of police and escort vehicles that accompanied the rolling load.

By 9:15 a.m., the tractor-trailer rig was turning onto the highway. Just five minutes later, it was easing under the traffic lights at the U.S. 60-West intersection. Then it was back up to speed, the rig's diesel engine rumbling as it climbed a slow rise on Kentucky 425, heading east.

It easily cleared some overhead Kenergy power lines; linemen who were on standby promptly lowered their buckets, an acknowledgement that everything was going according to plan.

At 9:32 a.m., the rig pulled onto the Pratt property, and police escorts left the convoy to return to normal service.

Five minutes later, the big load that had briefly dwarfed other vehicles on the highway was itself dwarfed by the steel superstructure of the paper mill. A pair of large cranes were on hand to perform a tandem lift to put the 110-ton evaporator into place.

Elapsed travel time: Just 37 minutes.

Shortly after 11 a.m., a relieved Henderson Economic Development Executive Director Missy Vanderpool sent out a text: "The equipment is in place and at its forever home."

In about a year, the $600 million, 320-employee paper complex will begin recycling used corrugated containers — cardboard boxes, to the average Joe — into paper that will be used at an adjacent plant to manufacture new corrugated boxes and retail displays for customers such as Amazon, the U.S. Postal Service, Procter & Gamble and The Home Depot.