Scourge of overloading

Nothing can be more illustrative of the damage overloaded trucks cause to highways and bridges than the collapse of two bridges in a week.

The truck that caused one end of a bridge to collapse in Wuyishan, East China's Fujian province on July 14, had a carrying capacity of 15.5 tons, but was actually loaded with more than 60 tons of cargo.

A 14-meter-long truck is estimated to have been carrying about 160 tons of sand on Tuesday night when a bridge in Beijing's suburban Huairou district broke under its weight. The bridge is near a site where the illegal mining of sand is rampant and trucks reportedly transport sand in the evening to evade inspection.