Haulin' Ash
HAULIN' 38 CUSTOM RIGS Fall 2009 At 129,000 pounds and more than 98 feet, Burningham's coal ash-hauling tandem-trailer combo is one big custom rig By Photos courtesy of author & Paul Hartley H alf our electricity in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants, the typical power facility in the West burning 50 tons of bituminous an hour about 1,600 pounds a minute. Out of the fires comes ash a lot of ash. Perhaps surprisingly, 43 percent of that ash, about 29 million tons annually, is recycled for use in chemical prod-ucts and construction materials, primarily cement. It's usually hauled from generating plant to cement plant by rigs pulling special 30- to 35-foot doubles. Such rigs' GVWRs can scale as much as 132,000 pounds. One of the most wicked ash haulers on the road is a 2005 Peterbilt 379X called Haulin' Ash, owned by Burningham Enter-prises of American Fork, Utah, located about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City. Gary and Jeff Burningham started the business in 1988 to pay for college as owner-oper-ators hauling sand, gravel and anything else they could put in trailers. Today Burningham has grown