Five-day delay angers truck driver

GREENWOOD -- When Mike Dunn pulled his rig into an Interstate 80 weigh station east of Lincoln on Monday, he had no idea he’d be there for five days.

Dunn, who has been driving trucks for 29 years, claims Nebraska authorities would allow him to leave the weigh station only to get food at the truck stop down the road.

“I could only be gone for an hour and a half,” Dunn said Thursday afternoon.

Dunn’s problems began when he pulled into the weigh station about 11 a.m. Monday with a semitrailer loaded with a “secret” cargo: a huge metal cylinder weighing about 92,000 pounds.

“I really can’t say what it is,” said Dunn, who is from Huntington Beach, Calif. “It’s for the strategic weapons program for nuclear submarines.”

But it wasn’t the secrecy or the cargo that got him into trouble with the Nebraska Department of Roads and the Nebraska State Patrol. His truck and cargo combined weighed 142,000 pounds, over the weight limit by 6,000 pounds.

Dunn claims he has a letter from the U.S. Department of Defense allowing him to pass through states from Bangor, Wash., where his trip started, to the East Coast. Bangor is home to a U.S. Naval submarine base.

Dunn said he couldn’t show the letter to a reporter, but that it was faxed to Nebraska officials.

The letter asks states to allow federal laws to supersede their own, said Dunn. He said he passed through Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming without a hitch. Then he hit the Greenwood weigh station.

“They said I need to comply with the weight laws and have a new permit issued,” Dunn said.

Ellis Tompkins, rail and public transportation engineer for the state roads department, said Nebraska issued Dunn an overweight permit for his trip before he left Washington, but he was over the specified weight on the permit.

“The state of Nebraska is not holding him up,” Tompkins said, adding that the roads department was willing to give him a one-time permit to go on to Iowa.

But first, Tompkins said, Dunn had to prove he had permission to enter the Hawkeye state.

“We feel it’s not very nice to give him a permit and he goes into Iowa and gets immediately stopped again,” Tompkins said.

Dunn said he called U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel’s Omaha office for assistance. Mike Buttry, Hagel’s chief of staff, said they looked into the issue but could not discuss any details.

Dunn said he’d left the weigh station three times to eat, but he was running low on money.

Meanwhile, the State Patrol’s Carrier Enforcement Division fined Dunn $2,644 for being overweight. A spokesman for the agency could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

Dunn said his company, Bennett Motor Express of McDonough, Ga., has contacted other states along his route to ensure there are no further problems.

“I’ve never had anybody interfere with a federal government shipment,” he said. “Other states have cooperated. This is a piece of equipment that’s important to national security.”

Dunn said he paid his fine Thursday after driving his truck �” sans trailer �” to several ATMs. Still, he said late Thursday afternoon, the state had not yet given him a permit and he planned to stay overnight.

Dunn said he and his company plan to file a joint lawsuit against the state of Nebraska for impeding a federal shipment and to recover his lost wages, amounting to about $8,000.

Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at (402) 473-7243 or algis.lauk

aitis@lee.net.