What to do when you can't build an ice road

Several months ago our Canadian team received an inquiry to transport a 100 ton transformer from Flin Flon, MB to Island Falls, SK.  Our customer mentioned that there may be some bridge capacity issues along the route and asked if we could get a pre-approval from each of the provinces to ensure there would be no issues.  After we received our approvals, we visited the site and looked at the pad location as well as access into the site.  Upon inspection we noticed the below 880' long structure that we would need to cross once we were off the provincial highway system.

Our engineering team reached out immediately to the owner of the structure and soon realized that a generally standard transformer transport and set to pad would become a bit more complicated.  The structure was only 15' wide, which included a 24" steel grate the entire length of the structure, that our transporter could not cross.  This left us with 13' of usable structure (see below).

Additionally, the main girders under the structure were different sizes and we needed to make sure we distributed the proper load to each without overloading.  

Access to the site was limited to the use of this bridge, so any operations that took place at the bridge location needed to be considered as to not block access to the site.  After much review and collaboration with all parties involved, our team come up with a design that would let us utilize our original transport system.  Once we arrived we utilized our trailers towers to lift the unit 4'.  We inserted (6) dollies under our (3) carrier beams and offset them to one side of the trailer.  We also offset our original (10) dollies.  This configuration allowed us to stay under the 13' width restriction as well as accommodating the load limitations of the structure by reducing our overall axle weights by 40%.

The project was completed last week on time and without incident.