Welcome to the daily game of Oversize Roulette, played by anyone who travels between the Sonoita, Elgin, Patagonia region and Tucson on Highway 83—so, pretty much anybody who lives in these parts.
Spin the wheel and take your chances that your commute won’t require an extra 30 minutes—or more importantly, won’t damage your vehicle or imperil your personal safety.
Let’s meet some of the unfortunate contestants:
Jane Ordway, a former Elgin resident who recently moved to Tucson, was southbound on SR 83 near the Helvetia Road turnoff on Dec. 11, in her F-250, pulling a 30-foot trailer with two horses in it when just ahead, she was face-to-face with the flashing lights of a Department of Public Safety (DPS) vehicle.
Close behind the escort vehicle was a flatbed tractor trailer, pulling an oversize load down the narrow, winding state highway toward Interstate 10.
Ordway is a veteran of shuttling horses back and forth on this two-lane, unshouldered highway and dealing with the inconveniences of oversize loads, but this time she was in a pickle. Guardrail on the right, big load coming directly at her.
“There was no warning,” she said. “I had to back up a long ways. There was no room on my side of the road, just a little space on the opposite side.”
Ordway backed up toward that little space, but the space was narrow and sloped into a ditch: “I could have rolled the trailer if I kept going. My horses could have been hurt bad.”
She managed to pull forward slightly to level off. The trailer rig and escort continued northbound, while Ordway remained in a precarious position on the opposite side of the road. “The worst thing about it is after the rig went by, they didn’t allow traffic to stop so she could get back into the lane,” said Leonard Ordway, Jane’s husband.
Sonoita residents Sandy Wolf and Loren Krebs were returning from a camping trip north of Tucson on Dec. 9 in their 22-foot recreational vehicle near Hilton Ranch Road when Wolf was directed to pull onto the narrow roadside by a pilot car.
“I moved over as far as I possibly could, but he’s coming right at me,” Wolf said. “I got really nervous. You can only go so far on the dirt, otherwise I would have fallen off the embankment. And then the whole RV shook. I couldn’t imagine what happened.”
Wolf had little choice but to drive on to Sonoita. After pulling into the post office parking lot, she discovered that the rear panel of the RV had been clipped by the transport vehicle.
“Thank God I’m not hurt, my husband’s not hurt,” she said. “If he would have hit the back of my car any harder, the back would have ripped off, the dog would have fallen out the back and gotten run over, and I would have freaked out.”
The odds of getting caught in a similar predicament have been getting worse for commuters ever since the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) began repairs in November on four bridges on I-10, just west of Benson. The project, scheduled for completion in Spring of 2026, diverts any vehicle wider than 14 feet off the interstate. Eastbound traffic is detoured south on Highway 83, east on 82, and north on 90 to reunite with I-10. Westbound traffic follows the opposite flow.
Transport vehicles are required to obtain a permit—ranging from $15 to $100 per trip—from ADOT for loads that exceed various specifications. Those loads would include anything in excess of 8 feet, 6 inches wide, 14 feet tall, 53 feet long, as well as various weight restrictions. Loads over 14 feet wide are required to have law enforcement escorts—generally off-duty DPS officers who are paid by the transport operators. (One DPS trooper said the ballpark rate is “time-and-a-half,” which equates to roughly $45 to $66 per hour.)
Steve Elliott, ADOT assistant communications director, said loads requiring law-enforcement escorts are scheduled through ADOT at intervals of 30 minutes apart and are permitted to be on the highways from half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset seven days a week, excluding major holidays.
Elliott said DPS records indicate 31 escorted loads on Highway 83 (both directions) for the week of Dec. 8 and 26 loads for the week of Dec. 15, with the busiest day being ten loads on Dec. 8.But those numbers reflect only theDPS-escorted loads. Elliott did not haveany statistics related to all oversizedloads.
Anecdotal evidence from commuters seems to point to a much larger issue than ADOT is aware of.
A community Facebook page devoted to commuting on SR 83 is populated with growing frustration about the frequency of the loads. The PRT posted an inquiry on the page and received 16 responses within 24 hours. Respondents noted oversize loads going in both directions simultaneously; convoys of as many as three oversize loads; being pulled over three separate times on the 25-mile drive.
ADOT’s Elliott said loads without law enforcement escort are not subject to the 30-minute interval, but monitoring of even the escorted loads seems haphazard.
At about 9:30 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 22, two DPS troopers were parked at the crossroads of Highways 82 and 83, waiting to escort a mobile home north on the 83.
“The one in front of us is slow-moving, so we have to be in constant communication with them so that we’re far enough apart,” said one of the troopers. When asked about the 30-minute interval required by ADOT,he said that more commonly, they arespaced about 20 minutes apart—andthis doesn’t account for the smalleroversize loads.
When informed by email of some of the commuter concerns posted on the Facebook page, ADOT’s Elliott responded by email: “I’ll share your observations with our permits staff and DPS.”
District 19 State Rep. Gail Griffin, responding to an inquiry from the PRT about the safety hazards, shared a letter she sent to ADOT director Jennifer Toth and DPS Director Col. Jeffrey Glover on Dec. 29 demanding “Immediate Prohibition of Wide Load Vehicles on State Routes 83 and 82.”
In part, the letter says, “These roadways are not designed to safely accommodate wide load traffic of this magnitude. … This is a life-and-death public safety issue.”
Griffin’s letter continues: “ADOT and DPS must immediately halt or prohibit the routing of wide load vehicles on State Routes 82 and 83 while this project is ongoing and implement a safer, clearly defined alternative routing plan that does not endanger motorists, residents or livestock.”
Griffin said she will follow up with ADOT by week’s end.
Elliott said motorists who encounter unsafe conditions or are involved in a collision with an oversize load should contact DPS’s nonemergency number (602-223-2000). DPS would then be able to contact ADOT to try to identify the offending party. “We have records of all these loads,” he said.
That’s exactly what Wolf did—as did Ordway’s husband, after his wife notified him of her incident.
Wolf said a DPS officer met with her three days after her RV was damaged. “They told me to talk to ADOT,” she said. “They didn’t even care if I filed anything. They didn’t have any record of any wide loads on that day.”
Ordway said his call was met with indifference. “All he did was say there’s nothing I can do about it if you don’t have a badge number of the (escorting) officer,” he said. “The point of it was I was trying to report an unsafe situation, and he’s telling me if there’s no badge number there’s nothing I can do about it.”
The PRT made two attempts to contact DPS regarding its handling of such matters but received no response.
While the inconvenience and traffic delays are a growing source of community angst, there are larger issues at play.
Bri Parker-Eaglen observed two wide loads within a 15-minute interval while picking up her children from a school bus stop on 83. “It’s becoming a real hazard at our bus stop, which is already around a blind corner,” she wrote.
Marc Meredith, chief of the Sonoita-Elgin Fire District, said there’s been no coordination between DPS, ADOT and SEFD about the scheduling of the oversize loads. Meredith said he is confident that “if an emergency arises, we’ll find a way to get to where we need to be, but just having the general information would be very helpful.”
The need for idling vehicles to pull off the roadway into dry brush poses an additional concern. “Roadside fire starts are not uncommon for us,” Meredith said. “One of my concerns, besides the potential for fire, is if one starts, people can’t move safely away from the danger.”
Mollie Wright of Patagonia recounted an incident she experienced on Dec. 18 while heading southbound on the 83 near the Rosemont turnoff, at a stretch of the highway with no guardrails.
“This load was unusually wide,” she said. “They (the DPS escort) said scoot over, but I couldn’t scoot over very far without falling into a ravine. It passed about five inches from my door. It was like I had a choice of getting hit by the wide load or take a chance of falling into the ravine. My heart was pounding so much. I was so angry and so scared.”
Gregg Johnson of Sonoita encountered what was likely the same load on the 18th, a bit further to the north. “DPS stopped us where there was NO room outside the white line,” he wrote. “Load was too wide to pass, he stopped in the middle of the road to let (southbound) traffic around.
“I’ve been traveling 83 four to six days a week for almost 25 years. I get the oversized load thing and accept it. However, whoever is driving these DPS escort vehicles are going to get somebody killed with their ignorance.”
Wright, Wolf and the Ordways expressed similar concerns about ensuring that vehicles are being pulled over in safe areas, even if it makes for longer delays.
“I don’t mind waiting, but I don’t want to be put in a scary situation like that,” Wright said.
Added Wolf: “I just don’t want anybody getting hurt and I want people to get to their destination safely.”
Leonard Ordway offered some longer-term suggestions for minimizing the aggravation, including more pullouts along the 83, improving the training of escort personnel and announcing specific times and dates for wide loads so that commuters can attempt to schedule around and avoid the aggravation.
In the meantime, ADOT’s Elliott advised drivers to “practice patience” and “budget extra time and follow the directions from escorts.”