VERONA – Truckers have begun using the Waldo-Hancock Bridge again now that the Maine Department of Transportation has increased the weight limit on the 72-year-old span.

The department increased the posted weight limit on the bridge from 12 tons to 40 tons last Thursday

On the first full day after the limit was raised, more than 100 trucks that had been banned under the old posting traveled across the bridge, according to DOT spokeswoman Carol Morris.

The department’s weigh-in-motion equipment counts the trucks and weighs them as the vehicles pass over the in-the-ground equipment.

On Friday, 94 five-axle trucks and 24 six-axle trucks crossed the bridge. Those are the classes of trucks that, even empty, would have been prohibited from using the bridge.

The numbers dropped over the weekend to less than half those trucks, but rose again to similar levels on Monday.

Truckers seem to appreciate the higher limit, and crews working on the bridge are receiving an enthusiastic response with truckers honking horns and signaling thumbs up, Morris said.

“This is going to save a lot of time, and it’s certainly going to help lower costs,” Dale Hanington, president of the Maine Motor Transport Association, said Monday.

Although raising the weight limit is a boon to the trucking industry, Hanington noted that there are still a number of truckers who cannot use the bridge.

“There’s still a significant part of the industry that’s excluded from using the bridge,” Hanington said. “We understand it’s for safety reasons, and we’re not complaining. But there are a lot of fuel haulers and woods products haulers who run six axles and operate at 100,000 pounds that will not be able to go over loaded.”

Still, the increased limit is benefiting many truckers. The impact was immediate for trucker Alan Smiths of Bangor, a driver for Vaughn Thibodeau & Sons. With the bridge available, Smiths on Saturday was hauling asphalt from the company’s plant in Prospect to Blue Hill instead of taking a longer route that avoided the span.

“I’m making five or six trips a day now,” Smiths said. “With the lower limit, I was doing two or three, depending on the time.”

The weight limit was raised Thursday after crews from the Cianbro Corp. of Pittsfield completed the installation of auxiliary cables, which have strengthened the deteriorating, 72-year-old bridge. The posting of the bridge had forced heavy trucks and buses to travel north to Bangor in order to cross the river, adding approximately 40 miles to a trip.

The posting was like “shutting the door on us,” said Levi Ross, transportation division manager for the Dead River Corp. in Bucksport.

“The 12-ton limit essentially eliminated the option of loading our trucks, which are based in Bucksport, at the Irving terminal in Searsport, from a cost-effective standpoint,” Ross said.

Traveling the 40- to 50-mile trip through Bangor to Searsport would have cost the company an additional $350,000 a year, Ross said. Instead, the company reopened its own fuel terminal in Bucksport.

The new posting solves only half of Dead River’s problem, Ross said. It will allow empty fuel trucks, which weigh 30,000 pounds, to travel over the bridge from the terminal in Bucksport to Searsport. Once loaded, they can head up U.S. Route 1 to customers as far away as Madawaska.

But the company can’t bring fully loaded, 100,000-pound trucks back over the bridge into Hancock County. Rather than run with short loads across the bridge for its customers Down East, the company will continue to use its terminal in Bucksport, which will affect fuel prices in those areas, he said.

“This is a blessing, but it’s not the entire answer,” Ross said. “The only answer is to get a bridge built that can carry 100,000 pounds.”

The department anticipates that the new cables will allow the department to keep the bridge open at the 80,000-pound limit for at least three years while a new bridge is being built. The department is working on plans for a new bridge that will be built adjacent to the existing one. DOT officials hope to have the new bridge open by July 2005.