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Sunday, May 19, 2013
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Ogdensburg International Bridge shuts down for corn harvester

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OGDENSBURG — Traffic was shut down for about 15 minutes Thursday morning on the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge to allow the crossing of a large corn harvester headed for Twin Mill Farms in Lisbon.

Several pickup trucks loaded with equipment followed its journey across the border.

“It’s a Gleaner R52 combine with a six-row corn head,” said Blake P. Gendebien, an owner of Twin Mill Farms. The farm has 150 dairy cows and sells 20,000 to 30,000 bushels of corn every year.

“What you saw today was an oversized, over-dimensional load,” said Wade A. Davis, executive director of the Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority.

The bridge, which sees about 700,000 vehicles cross every year, is used frequently for transporting large industrial items. When a larger item like the corn harvester needs to cross, the bridge is shut down to accommodate it.

While today’s harvester was under the 40-ton limit, on occasion engineers are called in to help get larger, heavier items across the bridge.

“We have the highest design capacity of any of the three regional structures,” Mr. Davis said. The other bridges are the Thousand Islands Bridge, Alexandria Bay, and Seaway International Bridge, Massena.

“Everything went real well,” Mr. Gendebien said. “Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority was very cooperative and nice.”

This wasn’t the first time Twin Mill Farms transported equipment across the international line. Mr. Gendebien said it had the bridge shut down about a decade ago as well.

The Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge handles about $2 billion in goods every year, Mr. Davis said.

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