| Pine Tree Wind |
| The Pine Tree Wind Project is being constructed by Kiewit Pacific for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. There are four phases of the project. At this time we are completing phase four. My job is transporting the parts from what we call the “lay down yard,” to the windmill pads. The lay down yard is approximately 12 miles west of SR 14 off Jaw Bone Canyon Rd. The roads in the project are very steep and winding. For comparison, an example: northbound I-5, going down the “Grapevine” is a 6% 35 mile per hour hill for 80,000 pound trucks; From the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 in Colorado going westbound into Vail, the grade is 7% and 25 MPH for 80,000 pound trucks. In the project we’re running up and down grades ranging from 15-20% with gross weights between 90,000 and 250,000 pounds. By the way, these roads are dirt, not paved. The roads are so steep, that a truck with no trailer has a difficult time going up due to lack of weight on the drive tires. For the heavy loads, we have a push truck. The push truck has blocks of concrete chained over the fifth-wheel. A normal loaded tractor in this configuration can gross 46,000 lbs. Our tractor has a lightweight of 23,000 lbs without fuel, chains, binders, and a driver. A normal highway tractor is generally in the 16k-18k range for a lightweight. Our push truck with the push rocks (concrete blocks) is grossing over 60,000 lbs. We attach the push truck to the front of another truck or to the back of a load, depending on what is being hauled. The great thing about pushing is that you just sit there, shift gears and push the throttle. When pulling, you’re pulling the load and the other tractor so you must really think about your turns especially when the mid and top towers are over 125’ long. Add two tractors that are 25’ long and a push/pull bar that is 10’ long. The roads are approximately 25’ wide. They need to be this wide to accommodate the cranes that are “walked” between the job sites. We’re using three types of tractors on this job. For the lightweight jobs, we’re using a 1982 Kenworth K-100 cabover. It has a 5 speed Alison automatic, with a 4 speed air shift auxiliary transmission. For heavier jobs, there is the 2002 Kenworth T-800 with an 18 speed manual transmission and a two speed auxiliary transmission. Then there are the two 2005 Kenworth T-800’s with the nine speed automatic and the four speed auxiliary transmission. And yes, we do use all of the gears. The loads are comprised of bases, mid-towers, top towers, nacelle, and three blades. This is really a nice area to work in. As I write this, the job is shut down for Christmas/New Years and there is also quite a bit of snow on site also. The elevation a the lay down is approximately 4200’. The highest elevation on the project is approximately 6100’. |
| Here are two clips from the site. They are in .mov format so you will need something that will play Quicktime. The first clip is of going down the last hill in the push truck to the lay down yard. 2 min 44 sec Clip 1 The second clip shows starting up the first hill pushing a nacelle. 1 min 36 sec Clip 2 |