She has gone.

[facthunter]

Better to hump slowly.  A side valve Morris Minor is always in the road. A Pot head is involved with grass not roads. Nev

[Brendan]

I buckled both lh rims on my territory at longwarry a few weeks ago  28 other people blew tyres and damaged their front ends on the same pothole. It was raining and you could not see it.

Western Victorian roads are dangerous .

[Jerry_Atrick]

Can you seek compensation from the govmint? 

[red750]

This collection of potholes at the end of Mahoney's Road Forest Hill, where the buses turn off Canterbury Road to go to the bus terminus in Forest Hill Chase, have been there for at least two months. If they get much bigger, a bus will be swallowed up.

 

[willedoo]

Two months, that's bizarre for something that size. Like a third world country. What's going on down there, is the council bankrupt or something?

[facthunter]

When I go into Melbourne the Large Number of Giant trucks is what I notice most. Upping the Allowed weight of them wouldn't help road surfaces, particularly when there is a Lot of rain. Once water gets under a road it's stuffed.  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

This was my route Wednesday and Thursday (with the obligatory overnight stop at Tocumwal):

 

It was a very pleasant drive. Back in July, it was straight up and back.. There were potholes on the Hume and the Golbourn Valley Highway.. Not a lot, but enough, and certainly big enough to cause some real problems (I did hit one.. it thankfully did no discernible damage, but it gave me a bloody decent jolt.. And I wasn't going fast - maybe 70km/h.

 

This time there were no potholes for most of the same route to Tocumwal. In fact, when you turn onto the Newell Highway that road is in bloody good condition, and makes the NSW roads look decidedly unmaintained. 

 

The route form Tocumwal via Echuca and Bendigo was a bit differnt, but to be honest, not much worse for most of it than I recall when I lived here over 30 years ago. Quite bumpy in places and dips galore. There were clearly areas where if they weren't attnded tom potholes would form in the not too distant future. There was a town - I can't recall which - maybe Rochester or Huntly - where there were a disproportionate number of potholes and I do recall two potholes on the Murray Valley which happened to be the width of my wheelbase as I did hit them  before getting to Echuca - but they weren't deep and not terribly bumpy. Of course if cars/tricks keep hitting them it won't be long before they are bumpy. You could see lots of repaired potholes - some looked very temporary. I am not sure why they attacked only the holes though - some areas of road were visibly damaged around the holes and they should have repaired the whole section. But, I guess there is a need to get the holes plugged ASAP.

 

I came off the Calder/Tulla freeway at Bell Street to Bulleen Road then back on myself a bit to Burke Road and then onto Moorabbin airport via the South Eastern and Warragul road. I absolutely agree with this:

On 28/10/2026 at 11:24 PM, facthunter said:

When I go into Melbourne the Large Number of Giant trucks is what I notice most.

The amount of what look like B-Doubles compared to when I last lived in Melbourne rolling through suburban roads (I don't recall any when I last lived here) is amazing. I understand the economics to the companies operating transport businesses and that use them, but it was a bit of a brain fart on many levels to increase the weight on all but very specific routes (I am sure they are not allowed down streets, but some roads didn't seem designed for them).

[facthunter]

They upped the Max Weight of them some years ago, and I blame that for a lot of the Problems. Nev

[willedoo]

5 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

The amount of what look like B-Doubles compared to when I last lived in Melbourne rolling through suburban roads (I don't recall any when I last lived here) is amazing. I understand the economics to the companies operating transport businesses and that use them, but it was a bit of a brain fart on many levels to increase the weight on all but very specific routes (I am sure they are not allowed down streets, but some roads didn't seem designed for them).

Jerry, don't forget to take into account that it doesn't matter how big, long or how much weight a truck carries, it's the axle weights that mainly impact the roads, ie: the ground pressure. A tandem axle grouping on a B-Double carries no more weight than the tandem axle grouping on a heavy rigid class truck like the bogey drive tip trucks we see everywhere.

[willedoo]

A bit off topic but on the subject of B-Doubles, I saw a really unusual sight recently on the Bruce Highway between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane. Normally on those roads only B-Doubles are allowed but I went past a conventional double road train tanker (semi trailer pulling a dog trailer via a dolly and drawbar). I don't think I've ever seen one there before and the best guess is they had a special permit for some reason. Normally, conventional roadtrains coming in from the west have to drop their extra trailers on the western edge of Toowoomba and shuttle them down to Brisbane one at a time, so it's a fairly big exclusion area.

[willedoo]

Another issue with roads is whether they are built for the allowable load limits. I can only see two choices - build the roads better to take the weight or change regulations to reduce truck weights. Either way has a big economic impact. The inflationary pressure of having lower payload/higher transport costs would be huge. Probably much cheaper to just keep patching the roads we currently have.

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

build the roads better to take the weight

My opinioon, from my experience, but not in road construction, is that it is the geology that makes constructing roads for heavy weights the problem. Over nearly all of the continent, the ground is  sedimentary material. Very few places have the surface close to bedrock. That results in great difficulty building a sound base layer upon whihc to build a road. Also, the way we seal the surface of our roads is a compromise between cost and results. That's why we have our roads sealed with bitumen sprayed over gravel. Where the roads are made opf concrete, the failure rate os a lot less, but the cost per kilometre is much more.

[facthunter]

A lot of  that was done during the Depression The cost today would be incredible. Nev