Overhead clearance

Most site-prep advice looks down. This one looks up.

Ground conditions get all the attention before delivery day, and for good reason, but overhead clearance fails a different way and gets missed for exactly that reason. Nobody thinks to check the sky over their own driveway until a driver stops the truck and points at a wire.

A tilt-bed trailer does not lower the container straight down from a crane. It tips the bed up at the front and eases forward, so the leading end of the box rises into the air as it slides off the back. For a few seconds during that slide, the container is higher off the ground than its own height, right in the middle of your driveway.

What actually gets checked

The clearance check runs the length of the approach, not just the drop point:

• Power, phone and cable lines crossing the driveway or hanging low over the yard
• Tree limbs that would scrape the trailer, the truck cab or the box itself
• Carport roofs, porch eaves and gutters anywhere near the route or the final spot
• Any arch, gate topper or overhang the trailer has to pass under first

A branch that hangs eight feet up looks harmless standing under it. It reads differently once a loaded trailer with a rising container is coming through underneath.

Why this isn't the same as checking the ground

Ground pressure and blocking are about what the container rests on once it's down. Overhead clearance is about what it passes under on the way there. A spot can have perfect gravel and still fail delivery because a phone line droops across the driveway thirty feet before the drop point. The two checks are separate, and skipping either one causes the same result: a truck that has to stop and wait for a fix.

Send a photo before we send a truck

The cheapest way to clear this is a phone photo before delivery day, taken from the road looking down the driveway and again standing at the drop spot looking back. Anything that looks close, a line, a branch, a low roofline, we'd rather see it now than have a driver find it with a loaded trailer.