A tractor-trailer hauling more than 380 tons of equipment crept through Delmont at no faster than 15 miles per hour, drawing crowds who lined Route 66 to watch the more than 200-foot-long rig navigate the small town's streets. The slow-moving spectacle snarled traffic but also became a genuine local event, with families showing up just to see it pass.
John and Laurie Eveland waited more than an hour to catch the superload go by, according to WPXI. Laurie Eveland said they had been tracking the truck's progress for much of the day before it finally rolled through. John Eveland joked that people had not been that excited since the 1700s, when buggies rolled through town. Andrew Beal, whose father drove trucks for 40 years, said seeing the truck was awesome. Channel 11 broadcast the truck's trip through the area live just after 5:30 p.m.
A Route Planned Through January 2027
The rig that stopped Delmont in its tracks wasn't put together overnight. Kentucky-based Edwards Moving & Rigging coordinated the haul route and permits with PennDOT for the 205-foot, 16-axle hauling rig weighing as much as 380 tons, according to TribLIVE. The superload also navigated difficult turns through Leechburg and Apollo on its journey.
The load qualifies for special scrutiny under state law: 67 Pennsylvania Code § 179.1 defines any vehicle combination exceeding 201,000 pounds gross weight, 160 feet in length, or 16 feet in width as a super load, per the Haul Handbook, triggering specialized state engineering reviews and structural bridge assessments. State police and other officials would assist with traffic around the convoy, according to WPXI.
The multi-day itinerary required the truck to park near Blairsville the first evening so crews could fully close Route 22 eastbound three miles west of Blairsville between 7 p.m. and midnight, the same WPXI report notes, ensuring the span could handle the crossing safely.
From a French Factory to a Retired Coal Giant
The power-plant parts riding through Delmont were shipped from Mobile, Alabama, before being barged up the Mississippi, Ohio, and Allegheny rivers to Schenley, Pennsylvania, according to NewsTalk WCCS. From there, they were trucked across Armstrong, Westmoreland, and Indiana counties to reach their final destination.
That destination is the former Homer City Generating Station, a 1,888-megawatt plant that operated for 54 years as Pennsylvania's largest coal-fired power plant before its permanent shutdown on July 1, 2023, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Site preparation for its next chapter included the March 2025 explosive demolition of the plant's cooling towers and its 1,217-foot chimney stack — the tallest freestanding structure ever voluntarily removed in North America.
A $10 Billion Energy and Data Center Campus
The equipment is expected to be used for a new power plant and data center project in the Homer City area, and the scale of that project explains why one truck through Delmont is just the beginning. The former coal site is being redeveloped into the 3,200-acre Homer City Energy Campus, a $10 billion project combining a 4.4-gigawatt natural gas power plant powered by seven GE Vernova turbines with a hyperscale AI data center, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Construction at the site has already employed over 1,800 union tradespeople as of this month, with the full redevelopment expected to generate up to 10,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent positions, Hoodline has previously reported. Amazon Web Services is separately evaluating roughly 2,200 acres across six sites in Center and Blacklick townships for 39 two-story data centers that would link directly into the new energy campus, a proposal that has already drawn scrutiny in local public meetings.
Dozens More Superloads Still to Come
Laurie Eveland said about 50 more superload trips are planned, and more than 50 trucks are scheduled to travel the same route through January 2027, according to WPXI's reporting. Each pass will likely mean the same rolling closures, night bridge crossings, and crawl-speed convoys that turned Wednesday evening in Delmont into a roadside gathering.
The buildout has already reshaped local debates well beyond traffic. State regulators continue weighing environmental permitting for the site. For now, though, residents along Route 66 got a rare front-row seat to just how much hardware it takes to build a power plant of this size — one 380-ton truck at a time.
