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A day after a third overpass was hit in two weeks by a semi truck transporting an excavator near Moose Jaw, the owner of a truck wash in the city says in his experience some semi truck drivers don’t know how tall their load is.
“When they come to my shop they want to know the height of my building, but then I ask them the height of their loads, (and) they can’t give me that answer. I think they should know what they’re hauling down the highway,” said Dean Evans of Super B Truck and RV Wash.
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“If you know the bridge is 14-foot-five and you’re 16 feet you should go around it, but they seem to keep driving,” he said.
The semi and its excavator load was heading south on Highway 39 when hit an overpass on Highway 1 east of Moose Jaw around 3 p.m. on March 16.
The overpass at Highway 39 and Highway 1 near Moose Jaw that was hit by a semi hauling an excavator on March 16, 2026. (Gillian Massie/ 980 CJME)
A big scrape mark was visible along the bottom of the bridge on Tuesday, which also has height warning signs and lights.
Evans said the flashing lights warning drivers of bridge height are hard to see in the middle of the day and it might help if drivers could see signs “way ahead of time” telling them the height of a bridge.
He also suggested that bypasses could be a solution instead of “wasting our money fixing these bridges all time.”
Minister of Highways Kim Gartner told CJME News on Tuesday that permits are issued by the ministry to a semi truck driver for a specific load and a specific route.
“The permits deal with things like height, weight and specific routes they’re supposed to follow,” he said. “My concern would be the application process … and the accuracy of the of the height of loads that’s being provided.”
He said the ministry would investigate the permit issued to the driver of the truck that hit bridge at Highway One and highway 39 on Monday.
“We do constant assessments on on incidents, and we’ll do an evaluation on this one as well.”
The crash on Monday followed two overpasses being hit by semis carrying excavators in Saskatoon last week.
The first overpass was hit on March 5 at Highways 11 and Highway 16, which affected traffic on both roads. The second overpass was hit on March 11, when a bridge at 108th Street was clipped by a truck.
Charges have been laid against the operator of the semi after the March 5 crash, with Saskatchewan Highway Patrol charging the driver with six offences, including damage to public improvement, driving with undo care and attention, operating with a major defect, brakes out of adjustment, exceeding maximum height restrictions and failure to comply with conditions of a permit.
Charges in the March 11 crash were also laid by Saskatoon police.
New signs identifying the height of the overpasses on Highway 2 and Highway 1 were put up due to crashes. (Gillian Massie/ 980 CJME)
The problem had been previously identified in Moose Jaw, where the Highway 2 overpass over Highway 1 in the city had a long history of being hit by oversized loads.
A $33.7-million project was started in 2025 to replace the aging bridges there and raise each structure’s clearance height.
The original overpasses were about 58 years old and had a clearance of 4.5 metres, similar to the first overpass hit in Saskatoon. When construction is finished, the new structure will provide a clearance of 5.3 m, the ministry’s current standard for new bridge construction, and similar to the second overpass hit in Saskatoon.
— with files from 980 CJME’s Jacob Bamhour and CKOM News
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